I applied through a recruiter. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Cisco (Richardson, TX) in Apr 2010
Interview
Hiring was in the 2000 gogo days. Cisco's interview process is 360, where at least 5 individual staff, whom you partner or work with or for must approve of you. Once completed the hiring manager has veto power. For me I was hired and offered a hiring letter the same day.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
There were no difficult questions asked, as I'm an expert in my field in which Cisco had just started to build - optical. However there were tranport questions like: What's the bit tax for ATM? What's PMD?