I was an on-campus hire. The university announced its placement dates and invited companies to recruit its graduates. Cisco showed interest and successfully managed to secure one of the slotted and prioritized placement days. All people who had shown interest in the company first had to go through an academic score filter. All who cleared had to write a test. The test covered theoretical and practical understanding of the subject. All who cleared the test had to go through a technical interview. Once you cleared the technical interview, you were invited for the HR round. If HR stamped on your mental sanity and found you good for a corporate setup, you got hired. They let you know on the day itself. All of the things mentioned in steps 4-9 happened on the same day.

Tested on basics. Asked a few questions about the language. Inquired about the tools needed to compile and build. Discussed debugging with the language. Then asked to build a system from scratch.