my friend who also happens to be my senior colleague from previous company happened to drop in my resume which was some 6 months old and I got a call from HR for interview scheduling while I was holidaying. Step 1: Well, it started with 1 round of telephonic screening which was more of technical screening + 1 or 2 behavioral questions. Technical questions mostly focused on the resume details, how do you resolve a loop in network, how to configure ip address for multiple computers automatically, which mode of transmission is used by DHCP etc. Step 2: I got confirmed for a onsite interview by the hiring manager next day and he scheduled the onsite interview in just a couple of days Onsite Interview: 5 rounds including lunch interview 3 completely technical 1-1 rounds with the software engineers from the team. mostly networking related questions + programming questions (design + coding approach) + OSPF protocol testing in depth with the CCIE guy from the team.. This round didn't go all that well. 1 lunch interview with same CCIE software engineer who took the previous round and over lunch he just asked some questions about virtualization architecture and how my earlier projects were related with networking + choice of platforms etc. 5 and the final round which was 1.2 hours long was with the hiring manager who asked all sort of resume related questions, and the behavioral questions. he asked how I would strike work-life balance, how do I face challenges, give examples and discuss about previously filed bugs etc. Step 3: I got the confirmation by phone after two days and had to go through some salary negotiation as the base pay was not in par with my expectation but I was told by the hiring manager that I was already earning above market standards and he could just match it with sign-in bonus amount. Well, I accepted the offer as Cisco was my dream job and as long as I got to work on good technologies and the work of my interest, I was okay with it. Also, I was mesmerized with Cisco campus at bangalore...