I applied through college or university. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Cisco (Mysore) in Jan 2011
Interview
The interview happened on campus as I was a fresher at that time. The whole process was very smooth with 1 aptitude round followed by 3 technical rounds and 1 HR round to finish it off. The interviewers were very helpful.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Basic questions for Algorithms, Data Structure, OS and Networking
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.