CCIE water cooler gossip: 100% of CCIE growth outside USA

It seems most of the growth came from china and India. That shows where the shift of power will be in the future. I know some of my friends who are CCIE are relocating back to India. We might see head count going down further as people move out of US to their home countries for better opportunities.

Received the following email message from a US based CCIE:

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News on two fronts. First Cisco is now releasing the statistics on a monthly basis. Second all CCIEs are from Asia now.

Spoke to an IT Cisco Partner VP who had sponsored 18 CCIEs in his life time.

His experience was 3 attempts for his candidates to pass:

	First lab try was to understand the test
	Second lab try you don’t know what you don’t know 31 days after the first test
	Third try was a charm, and was taken around 60 days after the second attempt with a one or two week boot camp thrown in just before the exam. With the last two weeks before the test study, study, study.

If you do the math, the cost to the VAR is around $30k to $40k:

	Written tests: Three times = $1,000.00
	Three tests: $2,000 * 3 = $6,000.00
	Boot camp: $5,000 + $1,500 = $6,500.00
	Four weeks paid for boot camp, personal study, and travel = $9,000.00
	Books, equipment, on the job training: $5,000.00 to $15,000.00

One CCIE for a VAR runs around: $30k to $40k. Then you have the bump in pay following the completion of the exam.

So you have to guess a few things are happening:

	Cisco is not sponsoring as many CCIE candidates in the US right now. This could be just a year-end sort of thing, (Cisco year ended 8/31/08)
	The new testing is slowing down Braindumps in the US and Europe
	Value Added Partners don’t see the benefit of the additional expense for Cisco at this time
	Companies are cutting back on IT training
	Growth in Asia for Cisco gear
	Slow growth for Cisco gear in US and Europe

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Sincerely,

Brad Reese
http://www.BradReese.Com

These stats speak loudly about the challenges facing anyone needing CCIE’s, particularly here in the U.S. While 6.1% unemployment makes the headlines, there seems to be little awareness of how the current skills shortages perpetuate the offshore outsourcing of jobs and the missed revenue targets of US companies. At Decision Toolbox we decided years ago to provide onshore-only outsourcing of recruitment services and it seems to be paying off as offshore models struggle to provide adequate customer satisfaction.

Received the following official response from CCIE Trainers - IPexpert:

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Brad -

As we're all aware - the economy in the U.S. is extremely sluggish - Reference the world's view on the U.S. economy and the Merrill / Lehman news that has shaken up Wall Street.

It's no secret that many businesses in America are cutting expenses drastically - essentially eliminating all *unnecessary* expenses. These expenses typically revolve around travel and unjustified training. As I speak to several training managers within various large-scale corporations - their response has been echoed, "Right now we've got a freeze on certification training, if the engineers we have can do the job - we're content. We're not able to justify training expenses unless the training is crucial to their performance."

Unfortunately for us (IPexpert, Inc.) - the CCIE certification isn't a base-level training curriculum, most engineers have extensive experience and are proficient when it comes to job performance. Our training is more of a program that teaches CCIE candidates the fundamentals of taking the CCIE lab with an emphasis on the tested technologies. We focus on time management, reading into the questions and what to ask the proctor. Our training is not an entry-level type of course that's needed to perform a job function (those students are few and far between).

Also, August is typically one of the slowest months (in the training industry) due to personal vacations and clients spending time preparing for a new school year (if the client has children).

I personally believe that the decline is a combination of those two primary factors (companies cutting expenses and personal schedules conflicting). The average *cost* of a CCIE Lab attempt is approximately $3,000 - and a week away from the office (or a week of non-billable time). This is a pretty hefty expense if a company is ordered to *cut unnecessary expenses* - and I'm pretty confident this expense would be one of the first expenses declined by management.

Internationally there is a larger emphasis on the CCIE certification - especially in various emerging countries with better financial circumstances. There's no question that the CCIE is still the industry's most-valued certification - both here and abroad - I'm pretty confident that this is a short-term statistic - we'll see when next month's report comes out.

**Brad - Keep up the good work - you have a great, informative blog that many people follow!

Regards,

Wayne A. Lawson II - CCIE #5244
Founder & President - IPexpert, Inc. & Proctor Labs, Inc.
http://www.ipexpert.com
Mobile: +1.810.278.1662
eFax: +1.810.454.0130
eMail: WLawson@IPexpert.com
Skype: WayneLawsonIPexpert
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Sincerely,

Brad Reese
http://www.BradReese.Com