My Trip to Pretoria
by Eman
Raleigh, London, Brussels, San Jose, Toronto, Atlanta, Orlando, Dubai, Athens, Cairo, and Pretoria have all been stations on my journey. What a long strange trip it has been too! You might mistake my adventure as some really fantastic road trip, but it was all work, really hard exhausting tiring work!
YEAH RIGHT.
I have more fun than the law should allow! I challenge; no, I dare any recruiter to step up with a better gig!
The CCIE Agent concept I created has been a unique experience and I am grateful to Cisco’s Worldwide Channels Talent Team for the opportunity to support their efforts globally. Celia Harper-Guerra, Eden Britt, Beth Rowland, Germaine Webb, Brooke Ellingworth, and Bill Philbrick have been great supporters. The events they have supported have been very useful forums for the channel partners. I have been especially pleased to see the Network Academy participation at some of these venues. Some of the channel partners at these events have taken the time to interview the students and they represent the best of the best in my opinion. Creating such good will with these kids goes a long way in ensuring they realize they have selected a good career path.
In Pretoria I was delighted to speak to the Network Academy students and teachers who came out to the Cisco HR Talent Forum there. I had just polished off an updated presentation I make to young audiences that has a supporting cast which includes the Three Stooges, Tom Cruise, Monty Python and Marty Feldman. I like to use videos in my presentations to kids, they seem to help drive home some of my career pointers. It has become a fun time and they seem to get a kick out of our chat.
Many questions from the kids I meet are about the future and many of the questions I have are about the future as well. What is going on? Well I really don’t know. I only know that the jobs for Cisco network engineers are still out there. I know that CCIEs are still in demand and I know that network engineers who are skilled can count on finding good jobs. What I ask them is if they are ready for the commitment becoming a CCIE demands. In many ways I see myself in the eyes of some of these kids. Many are not in the best financial circumstances and their dreams and hopes are wrapped up in the investments they make in their education. I like to congratulate them on their decisions to pursue careers in Cisco networking. When I speak with them one on one I like to reiterate that congratulations.
Pretoria and Johannesburg were nice and I gave myself time to see some of the countryside. I visited Nelson Mandela Square one evening. The statue of Mr. Mandela was inspiring to me. I had known about the man from so many news stories and articles about his plight and then fight and then rise to lead a country that needed his hand at the wheel. I think that anyone in the world can find strength and inspiration from Mandela’s story. His work uniting a country torn by bigotry and divisiveness was a herculean accomplishment. The human spirit always seems to rise to the occasion in most adverse situations, but this particular man at his time is truly inspiring.
South Africa for me was a great trip and I look forward to going back again. I met with representatives of several Channel Partners and have managed to discuss a few openings in these organizations with their recruiting and HR representatives. Like many parts of the world I see the beginnings of the great pause abating. The emerging markets for Cisco in the African continent seem to be staring up their momentum similar to what I am seeing in other parts of the world.
I cannot wait to go back and see more of South Africa!
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