ResumeAdapter
Updated 2026-07-08

Cisco has no leadership principles.
It hires against three core values.

What this page covers

Cisco publishes no Amazon-style scorecard. Its ownable frameworks are three core values, Connect Everything, Innovate Everywhere, and Benefit Everyone, which live inside The People Deal and Conscious Culture. This page maps each to resume language, with what it means, how to actually evidence it, and a STAR worked example you can adapt.

Scan my Cisco resumeFree to scan3 core valuesEvidence over adjectives
By the numbers
Core values
3
Connect, Innovate, Benefit
Employee framework
People Deal
Reciprocal, since 2014
Culture brand
Conscious Culture
Cisco's current model
Named rubric
None
No Amazon-style scorecard

The quick answer

What are Cisco's core values and what does it look for in candidates?

Cisco hires against three core values: Connect Everything, Innovate Everywhere, and Benefit Everyone. They sit inside The People Deal, a reciprocal employee framework introduced in 2014, and Cisco's current Conscious Culture model. Cisco publishes no Amazon-style leadership-principles scorecard, and its How We Hire page names no formal competency rubric, only generic traits like problem-solving, collaboration, and measurable impact. So treat the three values as what Cisco operates and hires against, not a guaranteed grading sheet. The way to evidence them is the same on a resume and in an interview: do not name a value as an adjective, prove it with a quantified STAR bullet. Show cross-team delivery for Connect Everything, a challenged norm with a metric for Innovate Everywhere, and mentorship or customer benefit with a denominator for Benefit Everyone. Scan your resume against a real Cisco posting to see which values a reviewer would actually find. Scan your Cisco resume.

Cisco does not publish an Amazon-style list of leadership principles, and its How We Hire page names no formal competency rubric. What it does own are three core values, Connect Everything, Innovate Everywhere, and Benefit Everyone, which sit inside The People Deal, a reciprocal employee framework from 2014, and its current Conscious Culture model.

Two of those are worth reading carefully. The People Deal describes what employees can expect of Cisco and what Cisco expects back, and its three tenets are the three values themselves. Conscious Culture is the broader model the values live inside. Together they are the closest thing Cisco has to a stated bar, so we treat them as what Cisco operates and hires against, never as a guaranteed grading sheet.

One honesty note on wording. The short descriptions of what each value expects are an analyst characterization, drawn from Patrick Moorhead's Forbes commentary on Cisco's values, not verbatim Cisco text. We present that framing as characterization and reserve quotation marks for the lines Cisco actually publishes, such as the three Conscious Culture components below.

The resume reading is the same for all three values: a reviewer indexes on the value being visible in the outcome itself, not asserted as an adjective. A line that reads collaborative, innovative, inclusive team player fails; a line that reads aligned two product teams on a shared schema with no direct authority and restored the integration in three weeks passes, because it shows Connect Everything without ever using the word.

What Cisco does not publish

Cisco's How We Hire page names no numbered leadership principles and no formal competency scorecard. It lists only general traits it looks for: your experience, problem-solving skills, talent, a passion for innovation, collaboration, measurable impact, a commitment to learning, and mutual respect and mindfulness. So the three core values, The People Deal, and Conscious Culture are best read as what Cisco operates and hires against, not a published interview scorecard or a guaranteed grading rubric. We do not reproduce an Our Principles list, because Cisco does not publish its wording, and we do not treat C-LEAD as a candidate rubric, because it is an internal leadership-development model rather than a hiring scorecard.

Cisco describes Conscious Culture as being aware and accountable for what is working, what is not, and how the company can improve. It frames the culture in three parts: an inclusive, diverse environment that positively impacts people, society, and the planet; the typical traits of the culture, such as its unique beliefs, behaviors, and principles; and the everyday interactions people have with their leaders and colleagues. Its stated foundations are The People Deal, Our Principles, and Full Spectrum Diversity and Inclusion.

The three core values, deep-dived

Every value with what it means,
how to show it, and a STAR example.

The value names, Connect Everything, Innovate Everywhere, and Benefit Everyone, are Cisco's own and are the three tenets of The People Deal. The per-value characterizations of what each value expects are drawn from analyst commentary (Patrick Moorhead, Forbes), not verbatim Cisco wording, so they are presented as characterization rather than quoted as Cisco's words. STAR examples are illustrative templates, not Cisco-supplied.

01
Core value 01

Connect Everything

Cisco's business is connecting people, information, and opportunities, and the value asks employees to connect with peers across teams to deliver outcomes. In analyst commentary on the framework, Connect Everything is characterized as expecting people to reach across organizational lines and break silos rather than optimize inside a single team.

What it means at Cisco (characterization)

Show cross-functional and cross-team delivery: an integration you built, a partnership you formed, a silo you broke, or an outcome you drove across orgs without direct authority. Lead with the quantified result and name the teams you connected, not a collaborative team player adjective.

How to show it on a resume
STAR worked example
Situation
Two product teams shipped overlapping APIs that broke a shared customer integration, and neither team owned the fix.
Approach
I convened both teams and the customer success lead, mapped the conflicting contracts, and drove a single shared schema without holding authority over either team.
Result
The integration was restored in three weeks, duplicate support tickets fell 38 percent, and the schema became the reference pattern two other teams adopted.
The resume bullet it becomes

Aligned two product teams and customer success on a shared API schema with no direct authority, restoring a broken integration in 3 weeks and cutting duplicate support tickets 38 percent.

02
Core value 02

Innovate Everywhere

Cisco frames Innovate Everywhere around an open, agile environment that encourages exploring ideas and challenging norms. In the same analyst commentary it is characterized as expecting a relentless pursuit of innovation, so a reviewer reads for a norm you challenged and the measurable improvement that followed, not the word innovative.

What it means at Cisco (characterization)

Name a novel approach you shipped or a norm you challenged, with the measurable improvement it produced. A small, well-scoped innovation with a metric reads more credibly than a sweeping claim with no artifact behind it.

How to show it on a resume
STAR worked example
Situation
Nightly batch reconciliation ran six hours, routinely missed its window, and the team treated the delay as fixed cost.
Approach
I challenged the batch assumption, prototyped an event-streamed reconciliation from scratch in a two-week spike, and proved it against a month of production data.
Result
Runtime dropped from six hours to under twelve minutes, the missed-window incident class disappeared, and the approach was rolled to two adjacent pipelines.
The resume bullet it becomes

Replaced a 6-hour nightly batch with an event-streamed reconciliation built from scratch, cutting runtime to under 12 minutes and removing the missed-window incident class.

03
Core value 03

Benefit Everyone

Benefit Everyone is framed around supporting employee development, appreciating contributions, positively impacting the world, and winning together. In analyst commentary it is characterized as expecting people to lift the team and the customer alongside themselves, which on a resume means shared credit and measurable benefit to others.

What it means at Cisco (characterization)

Show mentorship, inclusive impact, or a customer or society-level benefit, and attach a denominator so the benefit is measurable: how many people you developed, what share of a cohort improved, what the customer gained. Credit the team rather than claiming the spotlight.

How to show it on a resume
STAR worked example
Situation
New engineers ramped slowly and three senior engineers held all the deployment knowledge, creating a bottleneck and a burnout risk.
Approach
I built a hands-on onboarding track, paired each new hire through their first production deploy, then handed the program to two mid-level engineers to run.
Result
Median ramp fell from nine weeks to four across eight new hires, and the program kept running after I moved on, spreading the benefit beyond my own tenure.
The resume bullet it becomes

Built and handed off an onboarding track that cut median ramp from 9 weeks to 4 across 8 new engineers, clearing a three-person deployment bottleneck.

Value names are Cisco's own; per-value characterizations are from analyst commentary (Patrick Moorhead, Forbes) on Cisco's values and The People Deal, not verbatim Cisco wording. STAR examples are illustrative templates.

The frameworks the values live inside

Conscious Culture
and The People Deal.

Conscious Culture is Cisco's current name for its workplace culture, and it is where the three values live. Cisco defines conscious as being “aware and accountable for what’s working, what’s not, and how we can improve.” The point is that the culture is treated as something the company keeps inspecting, not a fixed slogan.

Component 01

“An inclusive, diverse environment that positively impacts people, society, and the planet.”

Component 02

“The typical traits of our culture, such as our unique beliefs, behaviors, and principles.”

Component 03

“The everyday interactions people have with their leaders and colleagues.”

Cisco's three culture components, verbatim

Cisco names three foundations for Conscious Culture: The People Deal, Our Principles, and Full Spectrum Diversity and Inclusion.

The People Deal is the piece a candidate should understand best. Introduced in 2014, it is reciprocal: it describes what employees can expect of Cisco and, in return, what Cisco expects of its employees. Its three tenets are the same three core values, Connect Everything, Innovate Everywhere, and Benefit Everyone, which is why those values double as the employee expectations you are effectively signing up to.

On a resume you do not quote the framework. You show that you already operate the way it describes: connecting across teams, challenging norms, and benefiting the people around you, each proven with a number. That, not a values statement, is what a Cisco reviewer can actually read.

Conscious Culture components and the definition of conscious quoted verbatim from Cisco's CSR blog, blogs.cisco.com/csr, accessed July 2026. The People Deal is Cisco's stated 2014 employee framework.

FAQ

Cisco values, FAQ

The questions candidates surface about what Cisco actually screens for, after they have read the pillar. Answers are byte-identical to the FAQPage JSON-LD, because AI engines that extract HTML and AI engines that extract JSON-LD should not see different text.

What are the core values of Cisco?

Cisco has three core values: Connect Everything, Innovate Everywhere, and Benefit Everyone. Connect Everything is about connecting people, information, and opportunities and working across teams to deliver outcomes. Innovate Everywhere is about an open, agile environment that encourages exploring ideas and challenging norms. Benefit Everyone is about supporting development, appreciating contributions, and having a positive impact while winning together. The three values are the tenets of The People Deal, Cisco's reciprocal employee framework, and they sit inside its Conscious Culture model. Cisco publishes no Amazon-style leadership-principles scorecard, so treat the values as what Cisco operates and hires against, evidenced with quantified examples rather than adjectives.

What is Cisco's Conscious Culture?

Conscious Culture is Cisco's current model for its workplace culture. Cisco defines conscious as being aware and accountable for what is working, what is not, and how it can improve. On its CSR blog Cisco describes the culture in three parts: an inclusive, diverse environment that positively impacts people, society, and the planet; the typical traits of the culture, such as its unique beliefs, behaviors, and principles; and the everyday interactions people have with their leaders and colleagues. Its stated foundations are The People Deal, Our Principles, and Full Spectrum Diversity and Inclusion. It is a culture model, not a published interview scorecard.

What is The People Deal at Cisco?

The People Deal is Cisco's reciprocal employee framework, introduced in 2014. It describes what employees can expect of Cisco and, in return, what Cisco expects of its employees. Its three tenets are Cisco's three core values: Connect Everything, Innovate Everywhere, and Benefit Everyone. The People Deal is also one of the stated foundations of Cisco's Conscious Culture. For a candidate, the practical read is that the three values double as the employee expectations, so evidencing them with quantified outcomes is how you show you would hold up your side of the deal.

Does Cisco have leadership principles like Amazon?

No. Cisco does not publish an Amazon-style list of numbered leadership principles or a formal competency scorecard, and its How We Hire page names no graded rubric, only generic traits such as problem-solving, collaboration, measurable impact, and a passion for innovation. The closest ownable frameworks are Cisco's three core values, Connect Everything, Innovate Everywhere, and Benefit Everyone, together with The People Deal and Conscious Culture. Treat those as what Cisco operates and hires against, not a guaranteed grading sheet, and evidence them the same way you would any behavioral bar: with quantified STAR examples.

How do I show Cisco's values on my resume?

Do not name a value as an adjective. Prove each one with a quantified outcome. For Connect Everything, show cross-functional or cross-team delivery, an integration, a partnership, or a silo you broke, ideally without direct authority. For Innovate Everywhere, name a novel approach you shipped or a norm you challenged, with the measurable improvement. For Benefit Everyone, show mentorship, inclusive impact, or a customer benefit with a denominator, and credit the team. Write each in situation, approach, and result order, then scan your resume against a specific Cisco posting to see which values a reviewer would actually find.

What does Cisco look for in candidates?

Cisco's How We Hire page describes what it looks for in general terms rather than a scored rubric: your experience, problem-solving skills, talent, a passion for innovation, collaboration, measurable impact, a commitment to learning, and mutual respect and mindfulness. Read alongside the three core values and Conscious Culture, the practical signal is evidence over adjectives. A reviewer wants to see cross-team delivery, a challenged norm with a metric, and a benefit to the team or customer, each shown through a concrete, quantified result rather than claimed as a trait.

Continue

The rest of the Cisco
resume cluster.

01 / Pillar

How to get a job at Cisco

The pillar covering Cisco's application path through Workday and Phenom, the three core values in summary, the G-grade levels, and the interview loop.

Read
02 / Spoke

Cisco levels

The G4 to G14 grade ladder, the levels.fyi-anchored comp read, and how the bar shifts from execution to scope as the grade rises.

Read
03 / Spoke

The Cisco interview process

The screens and panel, and how the three core values and Conscious Culture surface across the loop.

Read
04 / Resume example

Software engineer resume

A worked software-engineer resume showing the quantified, cross-team and innovation outcomes a Cisco reviewer reads for.

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Related

ATS Statistics

The dataset behind the editorial findings on this page, including the median pre-edit resume score.

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All company guides

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