Coming into 2022 everyone is feeling the business climate change toward the positive. While the "Great Resignation" may be felt in some industries and many may be contemplating new career paths,the need for global IT professionals has been strong, even in the years before the pandemic.

For many years, Cisco has been successfulwiththe Networking Academy program. They help to transform many learners in urban and remote areas, through the power of technology, to educate and create career opportunities. The academy's participants are having great success in landing that first or next career goal. Networking Academy continues as a mainstream global program, available to anyone, anywhere.

Cisco's global ecosystem of partners also has an opportunity to gain access to skilled professionals from Networking Academy. I would like to encourage our partners to join Cisco in placing business and IT professional into high-technology roles.

You may ask, how can this be accomplished?

Cisco's Talent Bridge Program

Cisco created the Talent Bridge program to address the tech skills gap with a holistic approach of connecting Cisco and partner employers to qualified candidates. We support employers throughout their employee lifecycle and prepare talent to join the workforce. Our Talent Bridge Matching Engine automates the connection between employers and job seekers at no cost. The assistance does not stop with matching employers to jobs, the program also offers:

• Career Advice
• Support services for the talent journey
• A self-paced career preparation workshop

Maybe one of the most exciting developments is how the Talent Bridge is connecting many pools of talent together. We have created a focus on where talent pools and career professionals exist and have brought these into the program:

• Cisco Networking Academy
• Diverse communities
• Helping veterans transition into technology
• Direct applicants

Helping Global Refugees

Most recently, Cisco has been amazing in the response to the rising number of global refugees. We have been coordinating and working with our global NGOs through Cisco's Crisis Response (CCR) team, Country Digitization Acceleration programs, andthe Talent Bridge team to provide a multi-prong approach to connect refugees with job opportunities.

Specifically, the Talent Bridge program can assist our global partners with:

• Helping partners find refugees to join their teams, in either short or long-term assignments.
• Partners can post jobs and indicate if they are available to refugees -when they do this, they will have the option to filter candidates based on refugee status
• This is a free tool, and the team can help you get onboarded

There is a wealth of information that partners can reference and find everything they need to know through the Talent Bridge program. If you are a partner or working with NGOs and want to work with us on this outreach, please email [email protected].

I am a firm believer that the programs outlined above will assist our partners in finding talent that can accelerate your organization's growth. How special will it be if a talent match can be made that assists an early in career individual, or someone that is making a career change, or a refugee that is looking for that one break to turn their situation around.

Take the steps to discover more about how these programs can generate talent opportunities for your organization.

Discover the Talent Bridge

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