I applied through college or university. The process took 2 days. I interviewed at Cisco (San Jose, CA) in Oct 2008
Interview
I got an interview on campus. Basic questions about myself and the company: "Tell me about yourself", "How do I know if you are the right person for my company?"...No technical
Then 1 month later I got an invitation including hotel and flight ticket to San Jose for 2 days.
It started with a dinner with Cisco employees.
The next days, we are divided into 3-person groups. Each group will be interview individually by 3 other engineers. They basically asked about my group projects. Gave some technical questions about Java like "What is inheritance?". The last guy will ask harder questions in C programming skill "Write a code to reverse the words in a string?" "Optimize it"
The process took 5 days. I interviewed at Cisco (San Jose, CA) in Jan 2007
Interview
received a phone call after initial HR filtering. Had the first phone interview with HR. Was invited to the location for a complete interview. The manager had 1:1 with me and showed the working area and explained work requirements. Then there were 2 panel/group interviews with completely technical questions. I then met a few more people and answered some questions.
Was offered the position before I reached home.
The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Cisco in Dec 2007
Interview
The interview process started with the on-campus screening interview. The questions were on data structure and on the projects I was working on. Then they invited me for the second round of on-site interview. The on-site interview took a whole day with three interviews and the lab tour. All interviews were technical questions and usual questions such as reverse the linked link, why do you want to work for Cisco.