Cisco Sales Associate Program
Never wrote blogs or articles, and never even wrote a diary (even at the age of 14: D), but since you are an employee of Cisco, you start doing things you are not used to (the very motto: get out of your comfort zone here very suit).
And then I remembered the last year that we spent in Prague with the best team I've ever worked in. And the team we have gathered is what we need: young specialists aged 22-31 from 15 countries of the world: from Switzerland and Saudi Arabia to South Africa. In the photo, we are our team with unrealistically cool Michael Harabidien, if you once had a chance to watch Cisco routing trainings, then, for sure, his name is familiar!
Cisco met me in such a friendly company in the CSAP program. What is this CSAP? Cisco Sales Associate Program. In Russian, it will be something like this: Cisco program to prepare young professionals to support sales. There are 2 directions in this program: the sellers themselves (Associate Sales Representative) and we, the engineers (Associate Sales Engineer). In principle, for the first couple of months I didn’t feel a very big difference between us, the vendors also taught Cisco technologies, and us engineers the so-called soft skills. But let's still remember everything in order.
')
My history of cooperation with Cisco began in the fall of 2015. Back in September, I saw an ad on one job search site and by description I liked the position, although I knew about Cisco at a minimum, it later turned out that Cisco is the global networking giant and people from school dream to work there. I had only a master's degree in mathematics and knew little about routers. Here, something found in my resume hr managers and called me back in a week, asked to arrange an online interview, where I was asked questions for an hour on the subject: your views etc ... As a result of this interview, I was asked to record a 10-minute video about Internet of Everything, and only then I was invited for an interview in Moscow. After all these interviews, I received an invitation for an annual internship (can this be called an internship? Rather, study + on-job experience, the same CSAP program) in Prague.
The program started on the first day of Cisco's fiscal year, August 1, 2016, and lasted exactly one year. The first 3 months we have been training. We were told from the very beginning what a switch and a router are, how they work, and they also talked about the latest Cisco technologies in terms of data processing centers, network security, and collaboration. Each topic was given about a week. A week on network fundamentals, a week on routing, a week on security, and so on; At the end of each course, we had an easy exam for 10 questions. At the same time, trainings on oratory and presentation skills were held. It was one of the most difficult trainings for almost all of us. But it was worth it, now I'm not afraid to present even for a large group of people. In general, I think such trainings should be carried out while studying at the university (one of the advantages of the American educational system is that they have just such trainings - this is one of the required courses in college).
During these 3 months, the most interesting role-playing games, Assessed Role Plays, also took place. We received a task a couple of weeks before the game, developed a solution depending on the requirements and planned the meeting itself. On Day X itself, we came to a meeting in official clothes as a Cisco employee, and our managers pretended to be customers (they succeeded very well because they, having worked for more than 10 years as system engineers, knew exactly how customers behave). It was very difficult, but interesting!
In general, at Cisco, I learned what team spirit is. At any moment I could turn to colleagues and managers for help, among 27 colleagues I found a couple of very good friends with whom I still keep in touch, despite the fact that we are a couple of thousand kilometers away. And how glad we were to meet again at the annual GSX conference in Vegas this year in August !!! (By the way, one more nishtyak: every year Cisco organizes conferences in Vegas and CSAPers go there too!) By the way, our photo from last 2016 from Mandalay Bay Las Vegas:
Starting from the second quarter, we began to gradually connect to real work. GVE is an organization in which graduates of the program work at first, engaged in technical sales support. If a partner or someone from the internal staff needs help on any technical issue during the preparation of the solution, GVE engineers come to the rescue. The interaction takes place remotely, which allows the novice engineer not to fall into the mud with his face and do the necessary research before answering the question.
I will never forget my first day in a new role, I got a request to calculate the cost of a pair of servers. Now I can accomplish this task in 15 minutes, but that day it took me forever. Questions arose at every step, and there was no confidence in their actions. As a result, the customer decided his task faster than I helped him. So the most interesting stage began, now it was necessary not only to learn the new information, but also to be able to use it in time for its intended purpose.
At the same time, I discovered the greatest beauty of working at Cisco. The beauty of this is that wonderful people work here: smart, inquisitive, active, always ready to come to the rescue and share their knowledge. When you are at the very beginning of a journey, it is hard to figure everything out on your own, and here you can and should seek help from your team. The team consists of engineers from various parts of the world, but when on a Sunday evening a person from another continent helps you understand how one switch is fundamentally different from another, you completely forget about distances and cultural differences. And it is very difficult to describe the emotions that you experience when you have a chance to live to meet people who interact with each day remotely, this is very cool!
Gradually, we began to feel more confident. It's an amazing thing, but you get used to the fact that it is never easy for you, you need to learn, learn and study again. Moreover, the exams (the so-called Milestones) have not been canceled. Now I am most grateful to our managers for the fact that my stress tolerance has risen substantially over the year of the program. When time is limited, but you need a lot of time, it is very useful to be able to calmly prioritize tasks, not to worry if you have to postpone something, but to sit longer with something. The same with the exams, the main thing that I understood is that you should not be too nervous and fussing, you need to be confident in your decision and calmly prove that it has the right to life.
Currently CSAP is looking for candidates from Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan !!!
If you are:
Then follow the links:
Associate Solutions Engineer-Kazakhstan
Associate Solutions Engineer-Belarus
Associate Solutions Engineer-Russia
Facebook group
And register for a review webinar (November 2)
Join us ;)
And then I remembered the last year that we spent in Prague with the best team I've ever worked in. And the team we have gathered is what we need: young specialists aged 22-31 from 15 countries of the world: from Switzerland and Saudi Arabia to South Africa. In the photo, we are our team with unrealistically cool Michael Harabidien, if you once had a chance to watch Cisco routing trainings, then, for sure, his name is familiar!
Cisco met me in such a friendly company in the CSAP program. What is this CSAP? Cisco Sales Associate Program. In Russian, it will be something like this: Cisco program to prepare young professionals to support sales. There are 2 directions in this program: the sellers themselves (Associate Sales Representative) and we, the engineers (Associate Sales Engineer). In principle, for the first couple of months I didn’t feel a very big difference between us, the vendors also taught Cisco technologies, and us engineers the so-called soft skills. But let's still remember everything in order.
')
My history of cooperation with Cisco began in the fall of 2015. Back in September, I saw an ad on one job search site and by description I liked the position, although I knew about Cisco at a minimum, it later turned out that Cisco is the global networking giant and people from school dream to work there. I had only a master's degree in mathematics and knew little about routers. Here, something found in my resume hr managers and called me back in a week, asked to arrange an online interview, where I was asked questions for an hour on the subject: your views etc ... As a result of this interview, I was asked to record a 10-minute video about Internet of Everything, and only then I was invited for an interview in Moscow. After all these interviews, I received an invitation for an annual internship (can this be called an internship? Rather, study + on-job experience, the same CSAP program) in Prague.
The program started on the first day of Cisco's fiscal year, August 1, 2016, and lasted exactly one year. The first 3 months we have been training. We were told from the very beginning what a switch and a router are, how they work, and they also talked about the latest Cisco technologies in terms of data processing centers, network security, and collaboration. Each topic was given about a week. A week on network fundamentals, a week on routing, a week on security, and so on; At the end of each course, we had an easy exam for 10 questions. At the same time, trainings on oratory and presentation skills were held. It was one of the most difficult trainings for almost all of us. But it was worth it, now I'm not afraid to present even for a large group of people. In general, I think such trainings should be carried out while studying at the university (one of the advantages of the American educational system is that they have just such trainings - this is one of the required courses in college).
During these 3 months, the most interesting role-playing games, Assessed Role Plays, also took place. We received a task a couple of weeks before the game, developed a solution depending on the requirements and planned the meeting itself. On Day X itself, we came to a meeting in official clothes as a Cisco employee, and our managers pretended to be customers (they succeeded very well because they, having worked for more than 10 years as system engineers, knew exactly how customers behave). It was very difficult, but interesting!
In general, at Cisco, I learned what team spirit is. At any moment I could turn to colleagues and managers for help, among 27 colleagues I found a couple of very good friends with whom I still keep in touch, despite the fact that we are a couple of thousand kilometers away. And how glad we were to meet again at the annual GSX conference in Vegas this year in August !!! (By the way, one more nishtyak: every year Cisco organizes conferences in Vegas and CSAPers go there too!) By the way, our photo from last 2016 from Mandalay Bay Las Vegas:
Starting from the second quarter, we began to gradually connect to real work. GVE is an organization in which graduates of the program work at first, engaged in technical sales support. If a partner or someone from the internal staff needs help on any technical issue during the preparation of the solution, GVE engineers come to the rescue. The interaction takes place remotely, which allows the novice engineer not to fall into the mud with his face and do the necessary research before answering the question.
I will never forget my first day in a new role, I got a request to calculate the cost of a pair of servers. Now I can accomplish this task in 15 minutes, but that day it took me forever. Questions arose at every step, and there was no confidence in their actions. As a result, the customer decided his task faster than I helped him. So the most interesting stage began, now it was necessary not only to learn the new information, but also to be able to use it in time for its intended purpose.
At the same time, I discovered the greatest beauty of working at Cisco. The beauty of this is that wonderful people work here: smart, inquisitive, active, always ready to come to the rescue and share their knowledge. When you are at the very beginning of a journey, it is hard to figure everything out on your own, and here you can and should seek help from your team. The team consists of engineers from various parts of the world, but when on a Sunday evening a person from another continent helps you understand how one switch is fundamentally different from another, you completely forget about distances and cultural differences. And it is very difficult to describe the emotions that you experience when you have a chance to live to meet people who interact with each day remotely, this is very cool!
Gradually, we began to feel more confident. It's an amazing thing, but you get used to the fact that it is never easy for you, you need to learn, learn and study again. Moreover, the exams (the so-called Milestones) have not been canceled. Now I am most grateful to our managers for the fact that my stress tolerance has risen substantially over the year of the program. When time is limited, but you need a lot of time, it is very useful to be able to calmly prioritize tasks, not to worry if you have to postpone something, but to sit longer with something. The same with the exams, the main thing that I understood is that you should not be too nervous and fussing, you need to be confident in your decision and calmly prove that it has the right to life.
Currently CSAP is looking for candidates from Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan !!!
If you are:
- Good at English
- Recent university graduate (degree received no later than 2016)
- Have a technical education
- You know something about programming not only by hearsay (C ++, JS, Python, etc.)
- Consider your motto: Passion for technology is a must!
Then follow the links:
Associate Solutions Engineer-Kazakhstan
Associate Solutions Engineer-Belarus
Associate Solutions Engineer-Russia
Facebook group
And register for a review webinar (November 2)
Join us ;)
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/340954/
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