I applied online. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Cisco (Jersey City, NJ) in Mar 2010
Interview
They contacted me from Monster and setup the interview via email. Once they call, they asked me many technical java questions that I easily answered. They asked me about messaging, classes, recursion, data structures, sql, transactions, hash maps, interfaces, then they sent me an exercise that I had to answer within one hour. The exercises where rather simple, and they asked to write real compilable code
I applied through college or university. The process took 2 days. I interviewed at Cisco (Raleigh, NC) in Sep 2009
Interview
Data strcutures, C and OS is the thing that rules for a cisco interview...if you know them you can get through...
first round : C
second round : OS
third round DS