Bucharest (RO), June 2008 - (by Elena Lita) One hundred and fifteen students from the Cisco Networking Academy Program have been selected in the second edition of the NetReady initiative to be supported in developing a career in the telecommunications field. NetReady is a joint effort begun in February 2007 by Cisco Romania, the Romanian Association of Networking Academies (RoNetAcad), and other major industry organizations.
It aims to increase the number of certified IT graduates in the country, bridge the gap between graduation and job acquisition for Academy students, and promote the Networking Academy in the country.
The NetReady program has already helped increase the number of CCNA (Cisco Certified Networking Associate) certifications in Romania by 45 percent, providing the project's participants with a greater number of IT professionals to support future plans for expansion. The initiative sponsors final-year students to take Cisco CCNA certifications. Once passed, the CCNA certification makes the student an attractive potential employee. Furthermore, NetReady's supporters, many of whom are Cisco channel partners, have been offering positions to a number of the successful graduates, creating an efficient bridge between academic and working life.
Nicolai Sandu, Regional Manager South Eastern Europe Cisco Networking Academy Program explained, -The selected students will be able to take the CCNA (Cisco Certified Networking Associate) exam free of charge, giving them the opportunity to further develop their career working for one of the program's partners. This year, 135 students from the Cisco Networking Academy have been registered from all over the country. Although the program stipulates only 75 certified graduates annually, the advanced level of this year's candidates led to increasing of the number admitted in the program to 115.
Cisco Romania initiated the NetReady program as a response to the shortage of specialists forecasted for the Romanian IT field. The success of the last year's edition combined with the interest shown by the program's partners in the current edition illustrates the real dimension of the issue.-
From the beginning, the NetReady project required the support of a broad range of organizations in addition to Cisco, so eight of the fastest-growing local and international IT and telecommunications companies in the country - Crescendo, Cronus, Datanet Systems, Intrarom, Kernel Control, Omnilogic, Romsys and S&T Romania - agreed to support the initiative.
Starting with this year's edition, the NetReady program will be integrated into the Partner Talent Portal, a worldwide Cisco initiative. The Partner Talent Portal is the Web 2.0 collaboration platform through which the students and the Cisco partners in Romania will have the opportunity to communicate with each other. Each student will have the chance to register to the portal and to fill in a form to create a personal profile containing information such as education, experience, and other details included in a resume.
The students will also have access to resume-building tutorials, labor market information, and descriptions of the various jobs available in the industry. Meanwhile, the Cisco partners in Romania will have the opportunity to post their job offers and to access the information related to the registered students and those interested in a job offer.
In order to participate in the NetReady program, candidates should be students in their final year of studies or graduates, as well as students or graduates of the Cisco Networking Academy (NetAcad) program. The Cisco Networking Academy Program is a comprehensive eLearning program that provides students with the Internet technology skills essential in a global economy, delivering web-based content, online assessment, student performance tracking, hands-on labs, instructor training and support, and preparation for industry standard certifications. The Academy infrastructure is designed to deliver a rich, interactive, and personalized curriculum to students around the world.
