I applied online. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Cisco in Feb 2012
Interview
I first got a phone call and the my availability was asked after which a day for interview was fixed. interview lasted for around 50min. I was asked to code on a shared screen with webcam on. The interviewer was one of the member from the same team which had an open position.
The interview started with a walk-through of my resume, and my interests. THe interviewer then narrated to me, what the team does.
I was asked just one question and was allowed to code in the lang i preferred, though he told he would appreciate if it was C. I chose C itself as that was the language I was comfortable with. He put forward a problem which was more of a data-structure, design question and I tried solvin it slowly. He gave few tips me whenever and wherever i got stuck.
It took 3 weeks, after which they responded with a reject.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
If there are 1000 websites and 1000 users, write a program and Data-structure such that i can query for the followin at real time:
1. Given any user, I get the list of all sites he/she has visited
2. Given any website, I get the list of all users who have visited it.
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.
3 technical rounds of 35-45 mins each for a 5 years experience JS fullstack.
1. Project currently working on + design patterns employed and resume based questions in details to check the depth.
2. System design interview - asked me to mention an approach to design a microservice for retail client. Followed up by questions on why I've chosen a particular tech stack and questions on how to tackle certain situations in real word on such services (inventory + payments etc).
3. DS based test - question was bit easy.