I applied online. I interviewed at Cisco in Feb 2015
Interview
I applied online for a entry level software engineer position at Cisco systems. I got an email from the university recruiter for a phone interview. Phone interview went well. It was just about my resume and the projects I have completed. During the interview she told me that she is satisfied with my profile and she is going to send my profile to their hiring manager and I will be hearing from them within three weeks for the next round. But I didn't get any email from them. I waited for a month and them sent a mail to the university recruited who interviewed me, but she didn't reply me back.
I applied through college or university. The process took 5 weeks. I interviewed at Cisco (San Jose, CA) in Mar 2015
Interview
I applied to the interview through university recruiting. Cisco invited me to an interview. The entire interview was behavioural and at the end was told that this would be the final interview. I was quite shocked there was no technical side, came as both a shock and concern. After two weeks i get a email requesting to touch back. They asked whether I would be fine doing a test validation position instead. I declined, saying that I only was looking for software development.
I applied through an employee referral. The process took 4 days. I interviewed at Cisco
Interview
WORST interview experience ever.
It started with a referral for application level position. Got an email requesting time for phone interview. After, deciding that got call from the same engineer that they have to fill the requistion so you will have to come onsite this week. So I rescheduled other interviews and went for the interview. When I reached the building my point of contact was not reachable. I waited in the lobby for 15 minutes and a gentleman from completely different team came and said I will interview you for my team. So from application team to a low level embedded team, what a jump. One of the interview asked me what is the balanced tree. I started explaining about the height and how difference in the height gets to the balanced tree. I was shocked to learn that interviewer's definition of balanced tree was a binary search tree. After explaining the interviewer and interviewer searching on the web for 5 minutes said there are these two definitions of the balanced tree and let's move on. One interviewer was very rigid about the hash chaining implementation. They wanted specific answers to specific questions rather than the thought process. The whole process was wierd.