“Nobody loves you when you're down and out
Nobody sees you when you're on cloud nine
Everybody's hustlin' for a buck and a dime
I'll scratch your back and you scratch mine”
- John Lennon

I am writing this month to share with you all my recent experiences as a CCIE formally in the training space, and as a CCIE suddenly thrown back into “normal” life as well as the transitions I went through to get through it. I would like to share with the community some of my story, and the steps I went through to recover from a drastic change in my professional and personal life. Hopefully this article will be of some help and encouragement to others out there that are searching for a job, or have been let go from a job and are transitioning into a new phase in their life.

In 2008 I began training to obtain my CCIE certification, and was fortunate to reach my goal in May, 2009 on my first attempt. During this process, I developed some great relationships with other people that had been successful in this arena. One thing I would suggest for aspiring CCIEs is to get into the community, and find some good role models. If you want to be successful at something, one of the best things you can do is hang out and pick the brains of other people that are successful. Learn how they think and what they did to be successful. Be a sponge and suck up as much as you can while you can.

Shortly after obtaining my CCIE, I began teaching and developing the CCIE R&S curriculum for IPexpert. I loved my work and things were going great. I created successful training products, taught classes, and trained others to follow in my footsteps of CCIE success. I was fairly good at it. I only received rave reviews on my classes, and everybody seemed to be happy. I became attached to this job. This job, this image, this CCIE number started to become a big part of who I thought of myself as. One mistake you can make is to start making your job who you are and how you identify yourself. I know I did. I let this role identify me and started to feel like CCIE instructor DEFINED who I was as a person. If you allow that to happen in your professional life, and something happens with your job, you lose a lot more than a job. You lose your identity and you lose a massive amount of morale. You lose everything. My advice would be to do the best you can to avoid doing this. At the end of the day a job is a job. A job does not define who you are as a person, so don’t let it.

When you are in the CCIE training space, you have a unique position. You immediately gain credibility, respect and near superhero status to some people. Everybody loves you…well almost everybody except for the occasional vendor that sells the same products and services as you and will go out of their way to attempt to make you look foolish for political reasons. Here is an inside tip – The CCIE training space is a highly political, highly competitive arena where everybody is connected. Like the mafia. Seriously. If you think the different vendors are going about their own business completely by themselves, you are mistaken. Everybody knows everybody, everybody talks to everybody, and everybody at some point is cutting deals with everybody else. There is fierce and heated debate and competition, but also a mutual respect. It is like being a member of a private special club where only the members know what is really going on in the inside of the club. During my time as a CCIE instructor, I made more friends than I have in my entire life during any 1 year stretch. Everybody wants a piece of you, and everybody offers to do nice things. It feels good, and is also a big danger because 80% of it is artificial. It’s like walking into a car dealership or strip club with $50,000 in cash in your hands. I bet the car salesman really warms up to you! I also would wager that after you purchase a car, that is to say once you no longer have what he wants and needs from you, he ceases to care about whether you live or die. The vast majority of people will flock to you and want to make friends with you because of what you can offer them. A relationship that is 100% give and no take is a bad relationship. I developed some bad professional and somewhat personal relationships.

Towards the end of May this year, I lost my job suddenly. I will not comment on the details of that process, because that is not what I do, but I will tell you that it had absolutely 100% NOTHING to do with me, and there was NOTHING I could have done to avoid it happening. Unfortunately, I allowed myself to slip into some of the things I warned about in the preceding paragraphs.

The first challenge for me was to realize that it wasn’t my fault and there was nothing I could have done to prevent it. I am the kind of person that by nature always tries to figure out WHY something happens, and relate it back to something that has to do with me. This was a difficult mental struggle to overcome. Sometimes there is nothing to figure out. Bad things happen to good people, and this was one of them. I also learned very quickly who my real friends were. Some of them are reading this and you know how you are. I am very grateful for those friends that stuck by me no matter what. I will never hesitate to say that Eman personally was one of the good guys. He wasn’t around for the immediate gratification. He wasn’t around to see how much knowledge, money, and time he could suck me dry for before throwing me in the garbage like some other people in the industry. Eman was a true friend through the entire process, and I want to thank him publically for it here in his publication. If you find yourself in a similar situation, this is a guy and an organization you can trust. I will personally vouch for that anytime anywhere to anybody.

First, I needed to realize that what happened in my situation was not something I could have prevented. Secondly, I needed to realize that my job does not define me. Just because Joe Astorino lost a job as a CCIE instructor didn’t mean Joe Astorino the man died. This should be the same for any job you have. This was difficult for me to overcome. Remember, at the end of the day a job is a job. There are much more important things in life. I really learned the true meaning of the old adage “Work to live, do not live to work.” The vast majority of negative emotions that come out of a situation like mine are probably related to this bonding of your job and title with who you are. When you let that penetrate your thoughts, you will inevitably feel like dirt when you lose that job, and I did. I felt like a piece of garbage for about a week. Once you disassociate yourself from that job image, you can realize that you are NOT a piece of dirt and that you are still 1 of 20k professionals in the world with your qualifications. You are a highly skilled, highly respected and highly sought after network ninja, and you are going to go out and get what you deserve.

Once you get over the mental and emotional struggles, you are on your way to finding that next new opportunity. I will share with you some of my experiences in that realm. I was literally out of work less than 3 weeks, and I was being extremely picky with candidates. First, get your resume updated and posted on linkedin, monster, dice and any other job board you wish. Apply for as many jobs as you possibly can that look interesting. Sit back, and wait. The first day on the market I received 9 voice mails from recruiters. Recruiters or head hunters are people to generally be careful with. Learning how to deal with them is a skill in and of itself that comes with experience. Here are a few tips I live by with head hunters:

• If a recruiter calls me and I can’t understand a word coming out of their mouth, I hang up immediately. Plain and simple. I don’t have time for that. If you can’t speak my language adequately, how in the world are you going to land me a job interview?

• If a recruiter leaves me a voice mail and after the first 3 seconds I am having a hard time understanding them, I delete it immediately without finishing the message.

• The vast majority (90% I would say) of these people are blood sucking maggots that are exactly like that car salesman I talked about. You have to understand that most of the time you are not dealing with overly intelligent life here. They only want to talk to you because you have something they want. Keep in mind that most of these people could care less about you, your family, your income, or whether you live or die after you sign on the dotted line. They get paid commission when you get placed at a company. Your happiness is not a factor. They will run you into the ground for $1 if you let them, so don’t go making foolish decisions and go jumping into things just because somebody calls you with some interest.

• I play by my rules and I lead the conversation in the direction I want to go, not the direction they want to take me. Typically in the first 2 minutes of the conversation they will inquire how much money you make. This is a common tactic they will use to find out how CHEAP they can get you to work. Never share this information. The fact is that what you make is your business and nobody else’s business. You know this, but most people share this information freely because they feel pressured to do so, and they are at a desperate place in their lives. My response is that I don’t share that information with strangers first of all and number two what does that have to do with the job opportunity? The facts are that first of all you need somebody to perform a job or a service, and number two I have the skills and experience to perform that job or service so the important thing for ME has nothing to do with what I make or made at past jobs. The important thing is what is the job paying. :)

• Once you make it clear you are NOT under any circumstances sharing your income with them, they will attempt to get you to commit to a number by saying something like “well what range of salary are you looking for.” Again, you tell them this has nothing to do with the job and ask what the job is paying. It is a simple question. If they can’t answer that, hang up. If you are a CCIE and you are good at what you do, there will be no shortage of these people. Once you get them to tell you what the job is paying you can immediately deduce if that is still something you would potentially be interested in. People will be interested in talent, but you choose them – You choose where you want to go based on your requirements, not based on what they tell you.

• There are a few basics you should find out before you waste any more time on the phone or on follow up. First, where is the job and is it a place you are willing to go? Is the job a permanent or contract position and if contract, what is the length of that contract? How much is the job paying and is it a number you find acceptable? If you are going to move for this job, are relocation expenses covered? You obviously need to have figured out ahead of time if you only want permanent jobs, or if you are willing to travel around doing 3-6 month contract work. This will be difficult if you don’t know what you want or are willing to do. You need to figure out all these details ahead of time. Once you do that, you greatly narrow down the candidates to only the ones that are realistic for you and your family.

• Keep in mind that when you work for contracting houses, they are taking half or more of your money. I have worked under contract and usually after the first 6 months you start feeling like you are getting ripped off. I personally decided I only wanted to consider direct hire positions. This will cut out the vast majority of the calls you get. Why would you want to work for a middle man? The amount of money these houses get from their clients is ridiculously inflated. Why not work directly for the company and take more of that money for yourself? Think about it.

• Keep a spread sheet of contacts. I kept an excel spread sheet of everybody that called me. I kept their names, emails, companies, job descriptions, salary ranges , location, etc so I could narrow down which ones were in the running. I followed up on the important ones. Make your full time job finding a new job.

• If you are going to play the game using these aggressive tactics, you have to have the expertise and experience to back it up. If you have game, employers will find you. In fact, they will go out of their way to find you and make you happy. So, don’t worry about the 90% of recruiters that are what I call mutts that you end up hanging up on. You don’t want those jobs anyways. Trust me.

Once you find an opportunity you want to shoot for, you still have to deal with a likely technical phone screening, and probably a minimum of two interviews. Learning interview skills is a whole other article that I can’t go into today. If you are a CCIE, you are already leaps and bounds ahead of most people on the technical side. My advice for you would be to step back and actually try to develop some other skills in your life as well that will help you get a job. You have the technical covered. If you did things right, you will blow them away on the technical side. Now, you need to learn soft skills. Learn how to talk to people. Learn how to start a conversation with anybody anywhere about anything. Learn how to make people like you in 5 minutes. Learn now to take a genuine interest in other people. Learn how to listen. Learn how to be a good story teller. Learn how to relate your past experiences to new job requirements. Learn about eye contact, body language and human interactions. If you happen to be single, you’ll probably end up with more dates too. :)

I narrowed my search down to two potential large companies and let them fight it out. :) You of course will want to make the best decision that is right for you and your family. I would suggest writing out the pros and cons. Money is important but it is not everything. I would strongly recommend you weigh in on things like health benefits, bonus potential, room to grow in the company, location, how you interact with the rest of the team in the interview, where you will be living and commuting, potential for relocation benefits, and more. Take everything into consideration and make the jump that is best for your family. I ended up landing as a technical lead reporting to a director of IT at a major international company. So, here I am back in the real world doing technical Cisco work. I feel like I have come full circle in a sense, and look forward to the future. I am also looking forward to learning more about a bunch of other technologies I have been isolated from this past year like the ASA, UC, and wireless. I still plan on getting back into the community more once I get back on my feet. Hopefully, this article was of some help or encouragement to others.