I applied online. The process took 6 weeks. I interviewed at Cisco (Santa Clara, CA) in May 2009
Interview
The interview requirements are different across different BUs, some BUs have high threshold on technical details, some BUs are more focused on communications and collaboration, and it depends on different managers, some rely on the reference and relations, some rely on your documentation achievement, such as how many patents, basically, that's better to get information before the interview about who will interview you, and who is the hiring manager , and do some homework.
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.