I applied through an employee referral. I interviewed at Cisco
Interview
An ex-coworker approached me about a job opportunity on his team. I had one telephone interview and 3 1:1 interviews. After the interviews I received an offer, then negotiated to salary and start date.
I applied online. The process took 6 weeks. I interviewed at Cisco (Raleigh, NC) in Feb 2013
Interview
- Submitted Application Online
- Exchanged emails with Cisco recruiter
- Had phone interview with the recruiter, very pleasant.
- Interviews were scheduled, took longer than expected, almost 3 weeks out. First of all, the interviewers are from different locations, interviews were mostly conducted via media onsite. Conference rooms were hard to find. Secondly, the hiring manager was away.
- Took all interviews - one on one with four different people.
- All went well, except with the hiring Manager, he seemed to want to be somewhere else from the very beginning. It made me feel he made up his mind either before or right after he met me, which probably explains why he would ask me a standard HR question and not listen to my answer. I understand but still feel it sucks that I have to give my best effort in answering all his questions. I wanted to leave but had to be patient and show my professionalism.
Note: The difficulty presented by interviews in a format as one on one with different people is that you find yourself repeating things you need to say, you could easily get tired of repeating yourself and ended up short change yourself.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
no difficult or unexpected questions. Questions I feel require a bit serious thinkings
- what do you consider to be your lifetime achievements?
- When was the last time you failed and what have you learned from it?