CNMCyber practice

A CNM practice job (hereinafter, the Role) is any of three roles that a CNM learner (hereinafter, the Resident) plays while undergoing initial practical training. That initial training is a part of the CNM Cyber Placement course (hereinafter, the Placement). The Economic Group develops and markets the Roles as a vital component of its CNM Cyber services (hereinafter, the Cyber).

Any Role corresponds with a pre-entry-level job. Entry-level jobs usually are offered to those who got trained in a particular profession, but hasn't had any experience yet. The Role is designed for those who hasn't obtained any formal training nor expertise yet, but would like to get those.

Work in general

The Coords work is to facilitate someone else's performance on Projects vs operations related to Cyber products. The Coord chooses the paid work from the Authorized work; alternatively, the Coord may propose own work, which may or may not be authorized for compensation.

Choice of work

By default, the Coords choose Endeavors that suit them best. CNM Cyber Project Managers may ask a Coord to take an urgent or specific project when they know anything professional about the Coord. That means that the Coords have to choose their first endeavor at least.

The work of the Coords is paid when they work on those endeavors that funding is authorized on the CNM Cloud Usable wikipage. That page contains links to:

• Endeavors that the Coords can work on. Those pages are called "endeavor pages" and are combined in the Category:CNM Cyber endeavors; for instance, WordPress for CNM Cloud.
• Products that should emerge as a result of the Coords work. Those pages are called "product pages" and are combined in the Category:CNM Cyber products; for instance, CNM WordPress.

Any Coord is welcome to pick any endeavor he or she would like to work on. In addition, the Coords are encouraged to propose their own endeavors.

Hours of work

The Coords choose their schedule. Rarely, they get more than 20 hours a week to leave enough time for looking for an entry-level job or another regular employment. The Coords are encouraged to serve as Contractors outside of their Coord's work; there are no limits on hours of contracting.

Positions

As of spring of 2023, The Economic Group offers three Roles:

1. CNM Website Developer
2. CNM Event Organizer
3. CNM Cyber Coordinator

Supervision

The Residents work with no supervision. They choose their projects, events, or endeavors, get or don't get the Customer's authorization, collaborate with the Administrators, produce what the Coords produce, and submit the outputs of their work.

Target audiences

The Team believes that, besides the Placement learners, a few audiences can get benefited from the Role. They are:

1. Vocation discoverers such as middle- and high-school students, as well as someones else who consider what profession they would like to pursue. While serving as Residents, they will be exposed to a variety of professions and can pick up their own one.
2. Skills builders. The Role by itself delivers valuable practical experience and build-up of soft skills to the Residents.
3. Career developers. Over its years, the Cyber witnessed many successes of people who transitioned from one industry and/or profession to other ones. Normally, one employer utilizes a limited scope of processes and technologies; consequently, scopes of competencies of its employees are limited as well. Someones who are currently employed, but would like to obtain wider skill-sets, may dedicate few hours a week, month, or even a year to explore something new in their industries and/or professions or outside of those.
4. Employment gap fillers. Those who need to drop out from the formal workforce, for instance, due to medical or family issues, may utilize the Role to fill in employment gaps.

Work outputs

Benefits

The Cyber provides every Resident with opportunities to:

1. Get prepared to get employed. The package of (a) CNM Cyber Welcome Session, (b) CNM Cyber Orientation, and (c) CNM Cyber Placement is designed to provide the learners with theoretical knowledge from scratch and place them in pre-entry-level jobs.
2. Start working in the Role in order to (a) possess work experience, (b) advance their soft skills, as well as (c) get introduced to various professions practically.
3. Identify the target profession and, if needed, outline the professional preparation at the WorldOpp Bootcamp and WorldOpp Employment package.

Compensations

Any work on commercial endeavors shall be paid. Commercial endeavors are those that have paying customers. Depending on the budgets, the Residents may or may not be compensated for their work on non-commercial endeavors.

Competencies

No specific knowledge, skills, and abilities are required to begin. Vice versa, the Role is created to build or refresh so-called soft skills. The Residents work with documents, technology, and other people, while entering the industry, building their general expertise, and observing what various professions look like.

CNM Cyber Team provides all of the interested candidates with free-of-charge training. Once again, no prior training and no experience are needed in order to get started. The Residents are encouraged to start from scratch and go where ever they dream.

How to start

Are you interested in getting started as the Coord? Please follow a step-by-step instruction as follows:

1. Read this wikipage. If you cannot read, you cannot work. This wikipage contains everything you need; however, its content is neither intuitive nor user-friendly yet.
2. Ask questions. Questions are a huge part of your work; if you cannot ask, you cannot work. If you prefer videoconferences, attend any Week at CNM Cyber event. You will have opportunities to ask questions and get responses in real time.
3. Study this wikipage to be ready to discuss two topics: (a) what paragraph is intentionally left unclear and (b) what section can be taken out without big harm. You will be offered to discuss those topics during your job interview. Why? If you don't know your job, you cannot work.
4. Understand why the Cyber project is undertaken and what value is expected from the Coord. That's simple. If you cannot deliver what the Customer pays for, you cannot work. Everything that the Customer pays for is stated on this very wikipage.
5. Wait for 2-3 months if you cannot understand what your objectives are. There is a chance that the course and/or videos will be developed out of this wikipage during that time. The introductory courses will be available at https://cert.cnmcyber.com after registering at https://opplet.net/user/register ; the videos will be published at CNM Tube and YouTube. Some of course wiki-materials are linked to CNM Cyber Welcome Session, CNM Cyber Orientation, and CNM Cyber Placement wikipages
6. Pick up your first endeavor at the CNM Cloud Usable wikipage when you understand what your objectives are. You may have no idea what that particular endeavor is about. First of all, no endeavor is fully clear and, secondly, to learn about one endeavor is always simpler that to learn about many. When you really studied this very wikipage, you should know how to go about that endeavor. If you cannot pick your project, you cannot start working as the Coord.
7. Contact the Customer while stating (a) the effort you picked, (b) what you plan to deliver, and (c) how much time you expect to work in order to deliver what you plan to deliver.

By the way, you can be paid to ask questions about this wikipage when you identify the endeavor behind that page.

History

History of the Role encompasses about nine years.

Pre-structure efforts

The Team of that time initially introduced its Roles in 2014. Both paid and volunteer opportunities had been featured since that time and until Early structure was developed.

• Straightly-paid positions or those Residents who were paid on the hourly basis. Titles of paid Residents of that time included Project Management Apprentice, Project Assistant, and, simply, project management learner. Upwork was the primary vehicle for the hiring of paid Residents. Among success stories, Moin from Bangladesh needs to be mentioned; no one else stayed in the Program for more than 3 months. Without a-few-months-long training, the Residents' performance was low and didn't allow for high wages. The overwhelming majority of the participants looked for income and dropped when realized that their income depends on their training, both training (as well as its development!) require a deal of time, and their "financial runaway" was too short.
• Contingent-on-income positions or those Roles whose payment was contingent on income. For instance, Mercedes from Northern Virginia succeeded to organize the bootcamp to get prepared for the PMP exam. The training participants paid some fees and she got their portion. In addition to organizing, Mercedes also served as a trainer, mentor, and sales person. Her involvement stopped after Mercedes moved to Arizona. The Team partnered with an accredited training provider to utilize the same model, but this provider lacked sales expertise. Great demand didn't generate income then. All in all, just few participants were interested in that pay model and even fewer could organize anything like what Mercedes organized.
• Volunteer positions or those Residents participated without any pay promise. Those positions were advertised mostly during CNM Cyber events, partner events, and newsletters that were distributed through a partner non-profit group. No pure adult volunteer stayed in the Program for more than a month. Nevertheless, this model was successful with kids and school students. The Program was introduced to the kids enrolled in after-school programs at Mott Community Center in Northern Virginia. In addition, one school student, Kyle, stayed in the Program on his summer vacation and literally got graduated from what now is known as the Placement. At least, it was found that Kyle has a strong aptitude to the information architect profession.

At that time, training wasn't tailored to pre-entry-level-job participants. The structure of the PMBOK Guide was used for project management curriculum; technology hands-on training was being structured on the fly, as the participants advance.

Although just few hires were successful, the experience was positive. Most of the prospects expressed great interest; they dropped out only when they realize that the structure was weak.

Weakness of the structure worked only with school students, but their availability was limited as well. With regard to school student availability, the Program depended on partners because of legal restrictions. In the state of Virginia, services to minors are licensed; no Organization behind the Cyber had the license.

The Program was marketed under several brand names such as Hotcoe, In2job, CNM Tech Training, Careerprise, CNM Digital, and Careerprise. The last brand name was also used to attract contractors without the Coords; that offer was published at the Careerprise bizopp wikipage. At the end of the day, early undertakings prompted future ones.

Early structure

The pandemic opened new windows to advance the Coord position. In early 2020, some training videos were posted at YouTube. The job title was changed to IT Project Coordinator (Agile). However, CNM Cyber events were postponed and recruitment occurred only through Upwork.

By the fall of 2020, the 5-level Program, WorldOpp Pipeline, was outlined; two first courses were developed at CNM Certs. Nevertheless, the Placement's deficiency braked the Program's development and success then. The Coords were needed to advance the Program and their recruitment produced too few candidates. Just two students, Mariam from Pakistan and Kevin from Kenia, were graduated from initial training.

Early technology

Since its conception, the Program utilized the technology of its partners. For about one year, the Program was an official partner of Microsoft. The training materials were stored at Microsoft SharePoint farms.

In 2016, the core technology was built with another partner, Sergey from Vinnytsia, Ukraine. All of the developed materials were moved there. However, in 2017, the main dedicated Cyber server crashed and all of the technology developments were lost.

Tech re-built

Since 2018, the technology has been restoring and advancing. Initially, this task led Roman and, after his quitting, Natalia. By mid-summer of 2022, most of the technology existed in prototype stages. The mostly used CNM apps were CNM Certs and CNM Wiki.

Bskol spin-off

In late 2020, a classified ad posted at an Ukrainian resource, rabota.ua, unexpectedly generated a good number of candidates. Marina from Kharkiv, Ukraine, was hired to translate the courses into Russian and adopt it to the Ukrainian audience. The Russian language was selected because of its popularity in Ukraine at that time and possibility later to introduce the Program in Belarus and Russia. The Russian version of the Program was advertised as Bskol.

In September of 2021, the marketing campaign was launched in Ukraine. Besides rabota.ua, the Team also used work.ua. Altogether, the Program generated six Coords in Ukraine in 2021. Dmitro from Lviv got graduated and hired in the corporate world. Karolina from Kiev, Margarita from Poltava, Alexander from Kharkiv, Yulia from Odessa, and Olga from Lviv remained in the Program as of late February of 2022.

The Placement was also initially structured during that period. However, it was clear that transition from learning to working needed further improvements.

Russian war

In February of 2022, Russian Federation attacked Ukraine from the north, east, and south. Suffering battleground losses for a few months, Russia introduced rocket attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure, targeting energy grids and communication networks.

The war heavily affected the Program and its Coords. Olga got disengaged and Alexander disappeared soon after the war beginning. Yulia and Margarita tried to stay in the Program, but eventually dropped out.

The marketing campaign to recruit new Coords produced more applicants, but significantly fewer participants. Because of the war, people looked for even faster income than in normal times. Applicants perceived that the Program offered training rather than jobs.

Russian language that the Program utilized in Ukraine also became a disadvantage to some Ukrainian-speaking participants. The number of complaints skyrocketed. In late summer of 2022, both advertising vehicles, rabota.ua and work.ua banned the Cyber from their platforms.

As a result, only two new Coords were hired in 2022: Vitaly from Zaporizhzhia Region and Sonia from Kharkiv. The war displaced both of them. From the Coords hired in 2021, just Karolina was productive in 2022. However, every Coord's availability was limited at various degrees.

Tech advancements

In the second half of 2022, the Coords succeeded to close two technology projects:

• Karolina mostly worked on CNM Bureau Farm. Working with Natalia, she composed the requirements, as well as sourced and selected the contractor. As a result, this Farm obtained its new bare-metal servers, as well as high availability, security, backup and recovery features.
• Vitaly was instrumental in advancement of CNM Campus Farm to its next level. Working with Natalia, he also composed the requirements, as well as sourced and selected the contractor. As a result, this Farm obtained its new high availability features.

Concept proving

Although the war in Ukraine heavily affected the Program, the training materials, especially, its Placement, were heavily tested. The first three courses were significantly improved. The most challenging part of the Program, its transition from learning to working, gets structured. Vitaly graduated from the Program, while landing a professional job in December of 2022. The Team perceives that success as a proof of concept.

iDosvid spin-off

In 2014-2017, the Team of that time delivered training services to school students. That experience was successful, but the scope of the program was minimal. Lack of strategic partners didn't allow growing those services up to the minimum viable product (MVP) stage.

Difficulties to recruit the participants generally and the Coords specifically prompted to spin off the Team's services. A separate bundle of services for school students, iDosvid, was designed in late 2022 - early 2023. All of three courses were translated into Ukrainian and the first course was adapted to the new audience.

Re-launch decision

Starting in fall of 2022, the Coord's recruitment in Ukraine stalled. It became clear that the Program cannot attract a deal of participants in wartime Ukraine. The Team decided to re-launch the Program in English under CNM Cyber brand name.

Improvements of the Russian-language version were postponed and new developments are supposed to occur in English. By mid-January of 2023, this very wikipage were developed to be used as a structure for an English version of the third course's minimum viable product (MVP). Russian-language resources would be added as additional services.

Developments and plans

As of January of 2023, the Team continues working on the technology platform and, in addition to that, is planning:

• For CNM Cyber services, (a) to restore CNM Cyber events, (b) to re-visit first two courses in English and, when they are ready to get re-introduced to English-speaking audiences, (c) to launch marketing campaigns in Kenia, Pakistan, Ukraine, and USA.
• For iDosvid services, to look for both (a) educational partners to bring school students to the Program and (b) non-profit partners to augment the Team's services.

Consequently, the Coords are needed to both (a) technology developments and (b) marketing of the Cyber services.