I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at Cisco in Jan 2017
Interview
Got a call from HR for a weekend walk-in. Around 30 people with experiences starting from 2 - 8 years came for the walk-in. First round was written test on c/data structures, networking and OS concepts. Some 10 people cleared the first round. All these 10 people were interviewed at the same time for the first round. First round was on basic c questions and questions on arrays/strings etc. Second round is on DS- stack/queue/linked list/tree etc. Third is bit of puzzles on math and few questions on c programming. Fourth round is on Networking concepts like L2/L3 stuff along with a simple queue program. 5th round is managerial round - mostly concentrated on behaviours aspects. And finally at 5PM, manager said you are selected and hr will call you. Overall experience was good while being interviewed.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Queue/
Binary search tree
Addition without using arithmetic operators
Puzzle related to math
Program for permutations of a string
Some program related to algebra concept
L2/L3 basics
Standard panel, very simple leetcodes. reverse linked list kind of vibe s . I was literarly asked about how a linked list is structured and reversing it. there was almost no friction which I was shocked by one of the reason I did not accept
They care about your skills, rather than your background. They have a template which they provide and you got to fill that, everyone is provided a unique number. You are instructed not to disclose any of your personal details in the due course of your interview.
The interview process was two rounds. The first round was a behavioral interview. Straightforward questions, like tell me about the most technically challenging project you have worked on. The second round was a system design interview.