My journey to becoming a Cisco Apprentice started in 2013 when it dawned on me, in 7 months’ time I would be leaving school and moving onto much bigger things.
Deep down I had always known university wasn’t the right choice for me, I didn’t feel prepared to be moving out, living on my own, studying at such a high level and racking up thousands of pounds worth of debt. The prospect of Uni terrified me.
One evening, a representative from the National Apprenticeship Service came and did a talk at my school, she spoke about the benefits of apprenticeships and how they weigh up to other career paths such as full time jobs and university, for me it felt like the perfect balance – working and finding a career that I love, as well as gaining valuable qualifications. I started looking online for Apprenticeshipsand not knowing what area of business I wanted to go into – I filtered my search by location. Living on the outskirts of Reading, the Cisco Apprenticeship Programme was one of the nearest schemes to me. At this point I had not heard of Cisco but the opportunity available seemed too great to miss.
The Recruitment Process
I applied the next day and uploaded my CV and within a few days I had received a call from an external learning provider, QA. I was told I had been invited along for an interview in a few weeks’ time in their offices in central Reading, a laid-back day with basic screening interviews and group exercises.
Once I had succeeded in the initial part of the process I was invited to the Cisco Office in Green Park for an open day, full of activities including tours and talks. At the end of the open day, we were given technical content to research for our official induction day – which was in June – the day after my last A Level Exam. The timing could not be worse!
The assessment centre was made up of 4 key parts; management interview, group exercise, presentation on a topic of my choice and a technical interview And when it came to my technical interview I froze – I was very aware I had not prepared as much as I could have and I was convinced I had blown my chances at getting one of the 6 places available for the Apprenticeship.
The Job Offer
A couple of weeks later I received a phone call from the Apprentice manager.
“Hi Lucy, I hope you are well. If we were to offer you a job within Cisco, would you accept it?”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, I had made it through so many stages despite thinking I fell at the last hurdle – I had got a place within one of the biggest IT companies in the whole world. After a couple of seconds silence to take the information in, I accepted the offer with a huge smile across my face.
My Cisco Experience
I have now been in Cisco for 18 months and have experienced two 6-month placements so far, and have just begun my third. My first was within Service Supply Chain Delivery (SSCD) – dealing with hardware replacement and return. I spent two weeks in Newcastle with a team learning the ropes and also got involved in a project dealing with Asset Recovery issues. I also spent half a year with Partner Architecture Solutions Organisation (AS Partners), which involved attending meetings with partners to discuss future prospects with Cisco, what they can do for us and what we can do for them. I also became part of the Program Office which dealt with the onboarding and procurement processes, signing up partners onto the database. This week I started with an AS Project Management team, the placement will be split into two halves, the first half dealing with GSP projects and the second Enterprise.
Alongside my work within Cisco I am doing a Level 4 Higher Apprenticeship Diploma in Project Management, learning about all different types of processes, concepts and tools, which is going fantastically and I can’t wait to start using my knowledge within my Project Management placement.
I have really enjoyed my time with Cisco so far and can’t wait to see what the future holds, I feel I have grown so much since starting the Apprenticeship and I have learnt various skills I feel I would have not gained if I had taken an alternative career path.
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For more information on the Cisco UKI Apprenticeship see Ellie Ulrich’s blog post here.
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