What do you bring to the table?

In my home we have a table central to our kitchen. I am proud to say that I built it by hand from raw South American Mahogany about 6 years ago. This piece of furniture is central to our family life. We gather around it after school to do home work, repair or build the kids' gizmos, eat and several times a year we feast at this table.

When my kids are at the table I sometimes remind them to respect the table. Regardless of where you might be, you should always respect your host's table. My old-fashioned upbringing and the manners my parents taught me are evident in all that I do, I hope. So when passing these along to my kids, I waste no effort in reminding them to be socially aware of how their words, actions, and appearances effect others -- basically to be aware of what they bring to the table.

What do you bring to the table?

I have found most CCIEs to be made of the right stuff for professional discourse and work. Sure, the occasional primadonna pops up, but for the most part, CCIEs are level-headed professionals with skills and experience that complement their teams.

Previously, when recruiting, I had to worry about whether candidates would even show up to the interview. I now must worry about what they bring to the table. An epidemic under-recorded is the trend of IT engineers who do not show up for or call to cancel a job interview. (See this article - Employers increasingly jilted by job seekers ).

Since becoming the only Cisco Authorized CCIE Recruiter in the world I no longer deal with that problem so much anymore. CCIEs show up or call, but mostly they show up. Some of my preparations include asking them the following questions:

• What are you bringing to the table for the interview?
• Are you wearing a suit? (Yes guys, women have suits too).
• What are you going to ask? (Use the same series of questions for each prospective employer and it will help you make a decision based upon the same criteria)
• Have you practiced your 30-second elevator speech? (A 30 second speech about who you are and what you can bring to the company is all you need. Any longer and you are selling yourself too hard). The problem for a lot of CCIEs though, is confidence. It can be delivered as something else, so be careful because there are about 17,000 other CCIEs and they all want a good job too. So don't be too cocky!

Beware - Confidence can equal attitude

It could be real or just perceived by an interviewer, yet it should remain a concern for a CCIE when interviewing that confidence can be perceived as attitude. Many times I have heard feedback from HR representatives (more from them than from technical peers) that the CCE had an attitude. I was told on one notable occasion that the CCIE would not answer questions about the 7 layer OSI model.

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