I applied through college or university. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Cisco (San Jose, CA) in Oct 2009
Interview
Initial communications was via email. The HR representatives were quite friendly and prompt. The planning and organization of the interview was quick, simple, and professional. The people were the work quietly type, friendly enough, but not overly outgoing. Most worked at their own cubicles.
Some advice for other interview candidates: be prepared to answer both behavioral and technical questions. I assumed that the first interview would consist only of behavioral questions...and I was wrong. Luckily, I managed to do ok on the technical questions. However, if you are rusty on coding principles...such as object-oriented design principles, I would freshen up on those. Expect to answer coding questions and write a few lines of simple code as well. In addition, you may be asked a few puzzles that force you to think critically. Overall, my interview experience was fairly short (less than an hour), and not too stressful.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
You have a silver block with 6 marks that divide it into 7 equal parts. How do you make exactly TWO cuts so that you can pay an employee exactly 1/7 of the block each day he works for a week?
The process took 2 days. I interviewed at Cisco (Milpitas, CA) in Dec 2009
Interview
School Job Fair: talked to the recruiter, discussed previous work experience and asked him to pass along my resume to be considered for interview
1st interview: On campus interview after the job fair. It was a 30 minute screening interview.
2nd round interviews: On Cisco campus in San Jose. All people interviewing for choice went through three back to back interviews with hiring managers. Each interview was approximately 30 minutes. Most questions were question-answer type questions rather than coding problems. More emphasis was put on discussing previous work experience.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
(forgot the exact question) but it was to write code that did bitwise operations. and then to optimize it