October 26, 2017 at 10:51Cisco Sales Associate Program
I never wrote blogs or articles, and I never even kept a diary (even at age 14: D), but since you are a Cisco employee, you begin to do things that you are not used to at all (the very motto is: get out of your comfort zone here very suit).
And then I remembered the last year we spent in Prague with the best team in which I have ever had the chance to work. And the team has gathered what we need: young specialists aged 22-31 from 15 countries: from Switzerland and Saudi Arabia to South Africa. In the photo we are our team with the unbelievably cool Michael Harabidien, if once we had a chance to watch Cisco routing trainings, then, for sure, his name is familiar!
Here such a friendly company I was met by Cisco in the CSAP program. What is CSAP? Cisco Sales Associate Program. In Russian, it will be something like this: a Cisco training program for young professionals to support sales. There are 2 directions in this program: the sellers themselves (Associate Sales Representative) and we, engineers (Associate Sales Engineer). In principle, the first couple of months I did not feel a very big difference between us, the sellers were also trained in Cisco technologies, and we were engineers with the so-called soft skills. But let's still remember everything in order.
My story of cooperation with Cisco began in the fall of 2015. Back in September, I saw an ad on one job search site and I liked the position by the description, although I knew a little about Cisco, it later turned out that Cisco is a global networking giant and people from school dream of working there. I had only a master's degree in mathematics and did not know much about routers. Here is something hr managers found in my resume and called me back in a week, asked me to arrange an online interview, where I was asked questions for an hour on the topic: how do you handle the situation when you have to work in a team with someone who do not share 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 to an interview in Moscow.
The program started on the first day of Cisco's fiscal year, August 1, 2016, and lasted exactly a year. The first 3 months we had trainings. They explained to us from the basics what a switch and router are, how they work, and also talked about the latest Cisco technologies in terms of data centers, network security, and collaboration. Each topic was given about a week. A week on networking basics, 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 ability to present 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.
The most interesting role-playing games, Assessed Role Plays, also took place during these 3 months. We received the task a couple of weeks before the game itself, developed a solution depending on the requirements, and planned the meeting itself. On day X, we came to the meeting in official attire as a Cisco employee, and our managers pretended to be customers (they did it very well, since after working for more than 10 years as system engineers, they knew exactly how customers behaved). It was very difficult, but interesting!
In general, at Cisco I found out 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 hosts conferences in Vegas and CSAPers also go there!) Here, by the way, our photo from last 2016 from Mandalay Bay Las Vegas:
Starting from the second quarter, we began to be gradually connected to real work. GVE - the organization in which the first time graduates of the program work, is engaged in technical support for sales. If a partner or any of the internal employees needs help on any technical issue at the stage of preparing the solution, GVE engineers come to the rescue. The interaction takes place remotely, which allows the novice engineer not to fall face down in the mud and conduct the necessary research before answering the question.
I will never forget my first day in a new role, I came across a request to calculate the cost of a pair of servers. Now I can complete such a task in 15 minutes, but that day it took me an eternity. Questions arose at every step, and there was no confidence in their actions. As a result, the customer resolved his task faster than I helped him. So the most interesting stage began, now it was necessary not only to try to learn new information, but also to be able to apply it on time as intended.
At the same time, I discovered the greatest charm of working at Cisco. The beauty of this is that wonderful people work here: smart, curious, active, always ready to help and share their knowledge. When you are at the very beginning of the journey, it’s hard to figure it out on your own, and here you can and should turn to your team for help. The team consists of engineers from all over the world, but when on 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’s very difficult to describe the emotions that you experience when you have the chance to meet live people with whom you interact remotely every day, it’s very cool!
Gradually, we began to feel more confident. It's an amazing thing, but you get used to the fact that you are never easy, every day you need to study, study and study again. In addition, no one canceled the exams (the so-called Milestones). Now I am most grateful to our managers for the fact that my stress resistance has risen significantly over the year of the program. When time is limited, but you need to have time to do it, it is very useful to be able to quietly prioritize tasks, not to worry if you have to postpone something, and sit with something longer. So with exams, the main thing that I understood is that you should not be too nervous and fuss, you need to be confident in your decision and calmly prove that it has the right to life.
CSAP is currently 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 the review webinar (November 2)
Join now! ;)
And then I remembered the last year we spent in Prague with the best team in which I have ever had the chance to work. And the team has gathered what we need: young specialists aged 22-31 from 15 countries: from Switzerland and Saudi Arabia to South Africa. In the photo we are our team with the unbelievably cool Michael Harabidien, if once we had a chance to watch Cisco routing trainings, then, for sure, his name is familiar!
Here such a friendly company I was met by Cisco in the CSAP program. What is CSAP? Cisco Sales Associate Program. In Russian, it will be something like this: a Cisco training program for young professionals to support sales. There are 2 directions in this program: the sellers themselves (Associate Sales Representative) and we, engineers (Associate Sales Engineer). In principle, the first couple of months I did not feel a very big difference between us, the sellers were also trained in Cisco technologies, and we were engineers with the so-called soft skills. But let's still remember everything in order.
My story of cooperation with Cisco began in the fall of 2015. Back in September, I saw an ad on one job search site and I liked the position by the description, although I knew a little about Cisco, it later turned out that Cisco is a global networking giant and people from school dream of working there. I had only a master's degree in mathematics and did not know much about routers. Here is something hr managers found in my resume and called me back in a week, asked me to arrange an online interview, where I was asked questions for an hour on the topic: how do you handle the situation when you have to work in a team with someone who do not share 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 to an interview in Moscow.
The program started on the first day of Cisco's fiscal year, August 1, 2016, and lasted exactly a year. The first 3 months we had trainings. They explained to us from the basics what a switch and router are, how they work, and also talked about the latest Cisco technologies in terms of data centers, network security, and collaboration. Each topic was given about a week. A week on networking basics, 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 ability to present 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.
The most interesting role-playing games, Assessed Role Plays, also took place during these 3 months. We received the task a couple of weeks before the game itself, developed a solution depending on the requirements, and planned the meeting itself. On day X, we came to the meeting in official attire as a Cisco employee, and our managers pretended to be customers (they did it very well, since after working for more than 10 years as system engineers, they knew exactly how customers behaved). It was very difficult, but interesting!
In general, at Cisco I found out 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 hosts conferences in Vegas and CSAPers also go there!) Here, by the way, our photo from last 2016 from Mandalay Bay Las Vegas:
Starting from the second quarter, we began to be gradually connected to real work. GVE - the organization in which the first time graduates of the program work, is engaged in technical support for sales. If a partner or any of the internal employees needs help on any technical issue at the stage of preparing the solution, GVE engineers come to the rescue. The interaction takes place remotely, which allows the novice engineer not to fall face down in the mud and conduct the necessary research before answering the question.
I will never forget my first day in a new role, I came across a request to calculate the cost of a pair of servers. Now I can complete such a task in 15 minutes, but that day it took me an eternity. Questions arose at every step, and there was no confidence in their actions. As a result, the customer resolved his task faster than I helped him. So the most interesting stage began, now it was necessary not only to try to learn new information, but also to be able to apply it on time as intended.
At the same time, I discovered the greatest charm of working at Cisco. The beauty of this is that wonderful people work here: smart, curious, active, always ready to help and share their knowledge. When you are at the very beginning of the journey, it’s hard to figure it out on your own, and here you can and should turn to your team for help. The team consists of engineers from all over the world, but when on 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’s very difficult to describe the emotions that you experience when you have the chance to meet live people with whom you interact remotely every day, it’s very cool!
Gradually, we began to feel more confident. It's an amazing thing, but you get used to the fact that you are never easy, every day you need to study, study and study again. In addition, no one canceled the exams (the so-called Milestones). Now I am most grateful to our managers for the fact that my stress resistance has risen significantly over the year of the program. When time is limited, but you need to have time to do it, it is very useful to be able to quietly prioritize tasks, not to worry if you have to postpone something, and sit with something longer. So with exams, the main thing that I understood is that you should not be too nervous and fuss, you need to be confident in your decision and calmly prove that it has the right to life.
CSAP is currently looking for candidates from Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan !!!
If you are:
- You are fluent in English
- Recent university graduate (degree obtained no later than 2016)
- Have a technical background
- You know something about programming not only by hearsay (C ++, JS, Python, etc.)
- Think of 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 the review webinar (November 2)
Join now! ;)