Cisco

Networking Academy

About Career Connection?

Career Connection is an online Cisco initiative that provides job placement, internships, and career development services to Academy students and alumni worldwide through links with public and private sector organizations.

Background

The Cisco Networking Academy Program is a non-profit educational program, which prepares graduates for networking and IT-related jobs in the public and private sector.

Since its formation in 1997 the Cisco Networking Academy has been phenomenally successful, operating in six theaters round the world– Asia Pacific, Canada, Europe, EMEA, Japan, Latin America and the United States – encompassing 152 countries. Student numbers are expected to top 400,000 in 2003.

As a result of the programs success and the need to match Graduates and Alumni with market needs for technology skills, the concept of Career Connection was created.

The Challenge

The challenge was to scope and present findings around the delivery of, by September 2003, an environment that links and provides approximately 500,000 Networking Academy Students, Graduates and Alumni – Candidates – with potential employers in 152 countries, whilst providing real value services and support for this community.’

The Project

With more than 6 years experience of development and solutions provision for global recruitment services, Parity’s Human Capital consulting arm was tasked with performing and delivering a month long scoping analysis. The objective of this initial exercise was to evaluate the viability of the Career Connection model and propose the best method of delivering against its goals

• to provide Cisco business partners, customers and other industry employers with a simple means of accessing trained, qualified and experienced staff of all ages, experience levels, and backgrounds to support their organizations growth and development.
• to provide candidates access to an online and offline program to assist them in finding employment offering:
  • Career development skills
  • Job placement services
  • Skill enhancement
  • Local language capabilities

Solution Delivery

Parity presented the comprehensive scoping document on time and in budget on 30th June 2003. The document detailed an approach that delivered a fully operational solution, covering 152 countries by October 2005, meeting all of Cisco’s solution objectives:

• A truly global online recruitment service
• A robust, flexible technical platform
• Placement support for all Career Connection - candidates
• Multi lingual capability including double byte
• A cost neutral, revenue model.
• An internal and external Marketing Plan that promoted and supported the solution
• A solution that could exist within the Cisco environment.

In addition Parity developed an intelligent costing approach that used future revenue share to secure attractive partner pricing. This achieved extremely low start up costs whilst maintaining ‘Best of Breed’ services and technology.