Interview With Eman Conde – CCIE Agent

It is my pleasure to introduce Emmanuel ( Eman ) Conde. Eman is the publisher of CCIEFlyer – an online publication for CCIE’s, CCIE candidates and the IT world in general.

Larry: Eman – Thanks for taking the time to answer some questions for our readers.

Eman: I think what you are doing is cool.  The more of us out here in the ether that are helping the CCIE community the better!  Welcome to the CCIE Flyer and thanks for making me a part of you forum.

Larry: Well one of the first things I’d like to chat about is your title “CCIE Agent”. What exactly is a CCIE Agent and what does he do? Is this a widely know industry? Are there others out there?

Eman: I coined the term CCIE Agent™ because CCIEs are so few in number and so high in demand yet many recruiters sourcing them don’t really care or know much about them.  The fact is many recruiters are looking for CCIEs because they are getting large fees for the higher salaried professionals.  So they are motivated by the money more than the people they represent.  I focus on the career side of the CCIE since demand is so high it is better in the long run to represent the CCIE after learning about their career goals.  So I applied for the trade mark CCIE Agent™ thus locking in my concept.

What I do is support the Cisco Channel Partners as part of the Cisco SRS (Strategic Recruitment Solutions) Program.  This is the Cisco Talent initiative led by Celia Harper-Guerra which I became one of the first inductees in support of.  Celia by the way has since left Cisco after 17 years. I am also joined by Bradley Morris, Decision Tool Box and TalPro the other three organizations in the USA.

The industry?  The CCIE Agent™ is widely known because I have been featured as a source of information at events around the world.  I speak with Channel Partners at forums where I help them understand the care and feeding of CCIEs.  I also have been a guest speaker at various Network Academy events around the world where I help give motivational presentations to the next generation of CCIEs.  I truly believe in giving back to the CCIE community which I earn a living from in many ways that do not generate revenue but spread good will.

There are no others.  In fact the bio used at the Cisco HR Talent Forums states; “

Eman (Emmanuel Conde) has the distinction of being the only CCIE recruiter promoted by World Wide Channels of Cisco Systems.   Eman earned this distinction because of his tireless efforts on behalf of CCIEs and developing Cisco talent.  He has spoken at Cisco Academy events, developed an international CCIE mentor program, writes for ITWorld magazine, has a very active blog focused on CCIE career concerns, and produces the CCIE Flyer an online magazine published monthly.  He has developed a unique approach to recruitment which includes giving back to the CCIE community through his advice, career columns and CCIE Mixers which are networking events he hosts internationally.  Unique to the industry is his specialization in CCIE recruitment and the many ways he has created a presence in the CCIE community.  He is featured in many CCIE blogs, supports live music in Second Life where he advertises on two stages, created the CCIE Network in LinkedIn, has run the only CCIE supported CCIE Salary Survey, has appeared on TV advising Hispanic viewers about IT careers, works with CCIE training companies internationally to provide career advice to students as they prepare for the CCIE Labs, and he is now sponsoring schools in Delaware and NYC as part of the Cisco Network Academy program and IT Rocks. 

Larry: Eman – Sounds like you have your finger on the pulse of the “CCIE Market”. Many of our readers would like to know about the current job market – do you see a definite advantage to having a CCIE certification?

Eman: The job market has been tough on us all.  I would be lying if I said it has not affected CCIEs in some areas.  The demand for CCIEs in the UC space is highest right now followed by R&S and Security and there is a growing demand for SP in some industries.  The advantage of the certification is mostly in the Cisco reseller arena.  The certification is a badge of honor respected in the industry distinguishing some network engineers over others because it is assumed that with the certification the level of knowledge is higher.  The fact that my clients are Cisco Channel Partners makes my work simpler and focused.  I see the demand as high because I am supporting the very space that competes for these resources the most.

Larry: This is very informative. I’m sure that our readers will find that interesting as well.

So besides being a CCIE Agent, you are also the publisher of CCIEFlyer. Tell us when & how you started that and how the readership is doing.

Eman: I started the CCIE Flyer as an email circular.  It was my way of informing my network of what I was doing and where I was in need of them for jobs I was chasing.  Then after the first three months I asked my brother Dan to help make it more formal.  I then started asking various CCIEs and CCIE wanna-bees to provide interesting content.  I have had fun writing some of my own stories and musings as well as career advice as well.  Readership is great.  I have 15,000 subscribers most of whom are CCIEs and on any given month I get 20,000 to 40,000 unique sessions.  We now have paid advertisers and are featuring boot camps in various places around the world.  So it is generating revenue as well as keeping my network of over 12,000 CCIEs informed.

Larry: Congratulations on the success!!! I love it when these types of things become successful and take on a life of their own.

So is there anything new and exciting on the horizon that you’d like to share with us?

Eman: Well I am pretty excited about the training venues I have found sponsors for.  I am excited because training is expensive and many companies price their CCIE boot camps so high that many cannot afford them.  So I am partnering up with Narbik Kocharians, Paul Negron, Piotr Matusiak and Faisal Khan and the sponsors of these training venues to bring high quality affordable CCIE boot camps to places like Africa, India, UAE and the USA.  The certification can lift people up from poverty and change lives and families forever and that is the reason I am so excited!

Larry: Wow – this should be great news to a lot of folks out there!!!

Now for a tougher question. I know that there have been some things bantered around about you online in a few places.

Eman: Well I once had a friend who writes for Network World and he decided to start attacking me and my personal character on the Cisco Subnet.  He and I actually discussed my CCIE Agent™ concept and my fear about focusing strictly on CCIEs before I began this journey.  I have always given him credit for making me feel I was doing the right thing in launching this as a career.  So I was shocked to see he was trying to deride what I was doing and even went as far as to completely fabricate quotes from business associates of mine.  He even called my boss in London to attempt to get me fired.  This was an extremely ugly attack and Network World did pull those articles after realizing they were based on lies.  In fact one of my business partners (and a good friend of mine), was threatened that if he did not help “Bring Eman down” that his business would be targeted as well.  Still out on Google he has this fabricated questionnaire posted where he asks biased questions that can only lead to his goal of trying to injure my business.  I refer to him as “Manboobs” because of an article I wrote about his attacks back in 2008.  So in the online space you can find people with their own agendas who will try to rally hatred for their own gain. 

Watch out for them Larry! 

You see them in forums where they use anonymity to push their personal agendas or vendettas.  I feel if you want to express your opinion and it is about a person then we should know who you are too.

Larry: Sounds like quite the battle. I’m glad for the CCIE community that it did not take you down!!!

Do you have any juicy tidbits that only a Cisco insider would know about that you can share with us?

Eman:  Well the era of Celia Harper-Guerra leading the Cisco Talent initiative has come to an end.  She has been a mentor and a great friend.  I have enjoyed her company of in many venues.  Thanks to her my work focused on Cisco Channel Partners was made a success along with my CCIE Agent™ concept.  Who would ever think that a recruiter would go global and travel the way I have?  Not me.  Not in a thousand years did I ever expect to have a chance like this.  I miss her.

There was a move afoot to reduce the ranks of cheaters from the CCIE ranks.  I can say no more, but look at the numbers in the population of CCIEs they have dropped in 6 months by 48…

I will be headed for Eastern and Western Europe in the spring with the Talent Team as they break open the emerging markets in those regions.

Monica (my best friend at Cisco) is still my best friend at Cisco!  She is still very keen on helping CCIE regain control of their IE numbers.  I have been getting a regular stream of CCIEs looking for help and trying to get out of rent-a-cert situations.

Some CCIEs think that only the CCIE pays the price for renting their certifications.  This is not the case.  I know of two companies that have been barred from the reseller ranks.

There is hiring going on again and it is ramping up!  Call me if you need a job!

On a personal note I have started writing a novel on-line called God Scrawl.  It is exposing me as I develop the concept and edit it live and people can see it take shape.  The site is called www.godscrawl.com

Thanks for this opportunity to become a part of your effort Larry.

Larry: Eman – Thank you for taking the time to share with the readers. I’m sure that many folks might be interested in contacting you about CCIE job placement.

Eman can be reached via email at: Eman@CCIEFlyer.com

Interview with 6x CCIE Roman Rodichev!!!!

It is my pleasure and honor to introduce Roman Rodichev 6x CCIE #7927 ( yes six ). Roman is the first person in the world to hold all 6 active CCIE certifications!!! He is also the instructor, content developer, and owner of ieMentor 

 Larry: Thanks for taking the time to participate in this interview.

Roman: Thank you, Larry. It’s great to see a new online resource dedicated to the CCIE training industry. Thank you for spending time on doing this! A lot of folks who are going for a CCIE appreciate this too.

Larry: Thanks. I am hoping that the blog will become a valuable resource. The first thing I have to ask about is – 6 CCIE certifications!!! What drove you to want to go that far?

Roman: I’m not even sure what exactly drove me to this. I definitely like being challenged, I like taking tests. There is no one common reason for each of the CCIEs though.
R&S was my first and it took a couple of years to prepare for, finally passing it in August 2001 on second attempt. I just got out of college, not yet legal to drink or to rent a car. Clearly that was the most exciting CCIE to get, far more exciting compared to the last one I got this year. What an experience that was, so much inspiration, drive, fear, stress, so little sleep! First attempt was a disaster, out of excitement I threw away one of the provided pieces of paper into trash, and Kathy, my favorite proctor, wouldn’t let me continue on my second day, even though I passed the first day. She said “You are lucky we are not putting you on a black list”. I would have had to wait for almost 6 months to get another seat.
Fortunately, past programming skills helped me develop a quick script that checked Cisco’s CCIE scheduling site for available dates and grabbed a date if it became available. I was back in a month and paid more attention that time. The big driver for R&S was career advancement and desire to get through that magic $100K/year salary barrier. But more importantly, I really liked what I was doing and was fortunate enough to become inspired by a couple of CCIE Cisco folks I met around that time. One of them, Dmitry Bokotey, 5xCCIE#4460, became a very good friend of mine and was the main point of inspiration for getting drunk on Cisco Kool-Aid.
I got Security CCIE six months later on first attempt. Playing with PIXs and VPNs at that time helped out a lot. The other factor was the young age of the Security CCIE track. I always recommend students to take the CCIE lab when it just comes out and not wait for the second version of the blueprint. I realize, of course, that not everyone gets a chance to do that. The first version of the Security lab was a little raw and wasn’t as advanced as the latest blueprint. It didn’t require as much effort. I’m not saying it was easy, but definitely easier than what other folks have to go through now to achieve Security CCIE.
If Cisco could take my Security track away and let me retake the new lab, I’d like to do that. I don’t think they allow this, though.
I remember asking them the same about my Storage CCIE so that I could go and try the new second version of the lab. They wouldn’t let me.
During those two years in 2002 and 2003, I was heavily involved in some voice deployments with CallManager, Unity, IPCC, and other Cisco voice offerings. This helped me gain enough interest and knowledgebase for attempting Voice track. My sheer interest for UC (or IPT back then) held me hostage and begged me to try it. I studied for a couple of months, went and failed. I have to thank proctor Ben Ng for creating a very challenging lab. He was the most helpful proctor of all!
I haven’t seen the new security lab, but based on the six labs I took, in my opinion, Voice was the hardest.
After failing, I studied each night after work for a month, and then went back and was lucky enough to pass it.
This is where the story stops for about three years. During that time I got a chance to do a consulting gig in Europe for about a year, got married, bought a home, those dollars had to go somewhere!!
I forgot about CCIEs for a while. Finally in 2005, around the same time Storage track was coming out, I got involved with ieMentor. It was more of a hobby than a business. I wanted to do something fun and take advantage of all the knowledge CCIEs gave me and pass this knowledge on to other people. Our CCIE Service Provider, CCIE Voice and CCIE Storage workbooks came out around the same time, followed by the CCIE Service Provider and CCIE Storage bootcamps.
Writing a CCIE Storage workbook drove me to take the CCIE Storage lab. Developing labs and questions is the best way to study for the lab. Of course, not everyone would decide to use this wacky approach, but it certainly helped me pass the Storage lab on first attempt in March of 2006 and then release the workbook a month after that. In the summer of 2006, I started delivering the CCIE Service Provider bootcamps without actually having the cert.
CCIE Service Provider is my favorite track. No other track has such a collection of interconnected technologies that allows you to achieve the result only if you get every little piece right. Doing that successful final ping between two CEs is more exciting to me than making a successful phone call between two IP phones. Discovering a failed ping between two CEs is more stressful for me than discovering a broken VPN session. I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but Service Provider technologies are just a lot of fun to work with! Obviously, I couldn’t teach the class for too long without having the certification. I went and passed it in November of 2006.
Finally, in 2008, a rumor spread that a CCIE wireless track was on the horizon. My brain was refusing to even think about it, while my heart was telling me “Just one more, and that’s it”. Also, the word “sextuple” had something sexy about it. Probably the only sexy thing ever associated with a CCIE. I locked myself in the room for two months studying controllers, access points, authentication, security, WCS, roaming, wireless voice, all the fun stuff you have to know for this great track. I took the lab in San Jose in May of 2009 and it kicked my butt.
Past experience taking these labs taught me a lesson:
1. Document the entire lab even if you think you passed it. This takes about 3 days. Don’t be lazy!!
2. Practice your lab at home and research every topic even if you believe you will get a different lab next time
3. Don’t wait after failing, schedule the lab for the soonest date possible. The most studying you will do is between the attempts.
After coming back from the wireless lab, I locked myself in a room for a month again, went back in July and was lucky to pass it. It was a very nostalgic experience coming to San Jose for the last CCIE, the same location I went to get my first one eight years ago.
In conclusion, what helped me get six CCIEs? A different thing each time:
1. R&S = lots of studying for about two years, a true CCIE preparation experience that most go through
2. Security = experience with PIXes and IOS security + luck
3. Voice = experience with IPT + two months of non-stop studying
4. Storage = writing a workbook
5. SP = teaching a bootcamp
6. Wireless = two months of non-stop studying
Some people who don’t know me think I have no life and that all I do is study. I would say that studying for CCIE R&S was really like that, no partying, lots of lab hours, lots of sleepless nights. Other tracks involved short but intense study methods. I would simply lock myself in a room with equipment and books for a couple of months. Another thing that helps me a lot is that I enjoy reading technical literature, Cisco Press books, but mostly Cisco’s documentation. The problem is that 90% of reading I do is in my car. I certainly don’t recommend it! At any point in time, you will find around ten 20-30 page Cisco website print-outs on my passenger’s seat. I don’t know why, but it helps me better digest and remember the information.
I don’t like long and boring tasks that don’t require some knowledge transfer, like driving, running on treadmill, waiting at the doctor’s office. I can’t just sit and stare at something, I need to read. Yes, reading while driving is not a good idea, but I never had an accident because of it, I usually feel more distracted talking on the phone while driving.
Larry: Wow – that’s quite a story . I think that all of us that have passed, taken or are preparing for a lab can relate in some way. As an instructor, how do you keep up to date on all of the tracks and the changes to the labs?

Roman : Various sources can help. I currently teach SP track and since the blueprint hasn’t changed for a long time, it doesn’t require too many changes to the curriculum. I make sure that I cover all topics on the blueprint. I also monitor IOS release notes to be aware of any changes or new features introduced. I listen to what students are saying or what they hear about from other people preparing for SP. I myself learn something new in each class.

Larry: That is definitely something to remember. We can always learn something new!!
 Do you have a favorite technology area? One that really interests you more than the others?

Roman: I enjoy working with Data Center, Virtualization, Unified Communications and Wireless. I like them all equally as long as the project is challenging.

Larry: There are a lot of folks that are currently studying for their first CCIE. They have problems balancing work, studying and family. Do you have any advice for them?

Roman: First of all, I need to mention that my wife and I don’t have kids yet, so I’m absolutely in no position to make recommendation of how to balance your time between kids and studying. For my situation, my success at getting CCIE and how quickly I can achieve it depends entirely on how much I am interested in the technology. If configuring MPLS VPNs is more interesting than watching TV, I will pass the lab quickly.
Find time to read. Print out a 10-20 page section of a configuration guide or a tech note and read it the same day. Do this every day. There are plenty of moments in your day, wherever you are, when you are idling and could spend that time reading.
Finally, again, it’s all about INTEREST and ENJOYMENT. If you are truly interested in the technology, if you are really enjoying studying, you will find time how to balance work, wife (can’t speak for kids) and studying. People who “can’t find time for studying”, don’t actually enjoy studying that technology.

Larry: That is an important item to consider. Having a passion for what you are studying makes it more bearable. What is your reaction to the major changes to the R&S lab structure? Do you have any advice for folks that are studying for this “new breed” of lab?

Roman: I’m not very familiar with it. I’ve heard about new troubleshooting section, but can’t speak much to it. I live in the SP and Storage world.

Larry: One question that I get quite often from people is – Should I go for a professional level certification before moving to the CCIE? What is your advice on that?

Roman: If you are going to do CCIE, why waste time on CCNP? If you are ready for CCIE, you can go and take all CCNP tests in one day, and you’ll pass them. Getting CCNP might get you a $10-20K salary increase, but probably only if you switch jobs. If you think that CCIE is your ultimate goal, go for CCIE, don’t think about CCNP. These two certifications require a different approach in studying. Some people choose to study with pass4sure and pass the CCNP within a week. I would rather prepare first for a CCIE, and then take CCNP tests without preparation a week before the CCIE lab.

Larry: Thanks again for taking the time for this out of your busy schedule. One last closing question – If Cisco brings out another CCIE track will you go for it?

Roman: Well, it’s kind of obvious that Data Center CCIE will be the next track. It would be interesting to see if Cisco keeps Storage CCIE alive or if it decides to merge them. I love Data Center technologies and therefore will do this track. Now, if Cisco decides to make a track on TelePresence, that’s a different story!

Please visit the ieMentor website for information on the products and classes that Roman delivers.

As a special bonus to readers of this blog Roman has offered a 10% discount on ieMentor products through March 1st, 2010!!!! To claim the discount, visit ieMentor , select the products you are interested in and email sales@iementor.com referencing that you are a reader of the CCIE Study Resources blog

ipexpert Launches New Website

A little earlier today ipexpert launched its newly revamped website. From a quick glance it looks great. I see that they are now offering the CCNA and CCNx training as well.

Wayne Lawson – President and CEO said that the new website is the result of 11 months of hard work.
Check out the newly updated website at www.ipexpert.com

Thanks
Larry Hadrava
CCIE #12203

CCBootcamp Gears Up For CCIE Voice 360

Next week CCBootcamp will be offering the Cisco 360 program for the Voice track. The 360 program has been out for the R&S track for quite sometime now.

Pricing is still not posted. I guess we will have to wait until next week when the program officially launches.
For details visit www.ccbootcamp.com

Thanks
Larry Hadrava
CCIE #12203

INE UPDATES

Recently INE started offering combo deals that will take a candidate from CCNA – CCIE with what looks to be good bundle pricing.
The INE product line has grown over the year and they are now offering a CCVP class on demand.

Check their website for details www.ine.com

Thanks
Larry Hadrava
CCIE #12203

Which Track Are You Studying For?

CCIE Tips & Links

Hello All:
We will be featuring a section of the blog that will be an area where you can add to the list of useful links and add tips to help all candidates achieve their goals.

If you have useful links that you think would be helpful, please add a comment with the link and I will add it to the main link pages.

Larry Hadrava
CCIE #12203

COMING SOON – INSTRUCTOR INTERVIEWS!!!!

Hello All:
Exciting news!!! Several of you have asked about having some instructor interviews to get the blog rolling. I thought that was a great idea so I have sent out several invitations to some well-known instructors to participate.

I’m excited to say that the first interview will be with 6x CCIE Roman Rodichev – yes 6x CCIE. Roman is one of just a couple of people to ever pass 6 labs and is the first in the world to hold all 6 of the current active CCIE tracks.

Please check back to see the interview and see who will be next.

If there are specific questions that you would like to see asked of Roman or other instructors during the interviews, please let me know.