The Cisco Partner Talent Network:

Game changer for industry talent and hiring managers?

“Dammit Jeff, I’m a recruiter not a miracle worker!” my Cisco recruiter told me back before Y2K in a fake Scottish accent. Apparently Nortel, Juniper, Lucent and a dozen Silicon Valley start-ups all wanted the same network engineers, as did many of the other recruiters on my 90-person Cisco staffing team. Almost nine years later, Star Trek hasn’t found the final frontier and neither has the tech talent shortage.

It might seem strange to talk about scarcity of talent when headlines are screaming “50,000+ Layoffs!” But a clear theme at the Cisco Partner HR Talent Forum last week was finding talent. “I need a CCIE who is comfortable with not just doing the sexy stuff”. “We’re a small Cisco Partner and need a solutions engineer who can double as an account manager”. “I keep losing CCIE’s because they spend all their time at client sites and have developed no loyalty to us as their employer.” I half expected someone to put lipstick on a MCTS and represent them as a highly skilled CCIE!

For job seekers, there are plenty of exciting new opportunities, so don’t put your resume and lipstick into the drawer just yet. In fact, this might be the ideal time to consider a career makeover. You’ve taken a great first step by hooking up with CCIE Flyer and Eman Conde. Eman is “the goodwill ambassador” for CCIEs globally and is very well respected.

For hiring managers, there are tough times ahead! Fortunately Cisco has stepped up to provide The Cisco Partner Talent Network, comprised of over 10,000 partners worldwide. Leveraging Cisco's collaborative technologies in a video rich environment, job seekers, their mothers, Cisco partners and their employees can gain information, build teams and share knowledge.

Decision Toolbox was tickled pink to be selected to the Cisco Partner Talent Network and have built a special portal for Cisco partners at www.dtoolbox.com/ciscoportal. At this portal, we are offering three forms of inexpensive, high value recruitment assistance to all Cisco partner companies.

These offerings include:
• Expert, full service recruitment at an average cost of 7% of salary.
• Compelling job descriptions and job marketing campaigns.
• Recruiting technology with the Recruiting Machine™ software.

While our Strategic Recruiting Solutions (SRS) alliance with Cisco is new, Decision Toolbox has been in the recruiting “trenches” for almost seventeen years and has worked on over 12,000 projects across almost all industries. What makes our model so successful is our commitment to efficiency and best practices. In many cases, Decision Toolbox has pioneered industry best practices in recruitment marketing, Applicant Tracking, reporting and most recently, RPO services. While “best practices” has become an overused term in our industry, the proof is in the results: full service recruitment for an average cost per hire of 7% of salary. Oh yeah, and part of the low cost is driven by: 100% virtual (no bricks and mortar), and a unique sales model – we bring on new clients mainly through client referrals and our channel partner program.

Cisco Systems continues to rock the free world! And I’m happy to be one of the groupies.

And thank you to Eman for letting Decision Toolbox participate in the CCIE Flyer.