The recruitment was a one-day process. The process, until you get your offer letter, is a bit long.

One week after my interview, I was asked to send my resume. Six weeks after that, I was asked to fill in my details on the Cisco website. One week after that, I received an email from HireRight for background verification. One week after that, I got confirmation of my background verification completion. One week after that, I received my Offer Letter.

So, the process overall took two and a half months. You should have some patience.

The first round was an online test at their premises. The questions focused on C and C++, with a few on aptitude, networking, and electronics. This was followed by two technical interviews, one managerial interview, and an HR interview.

Technical Rounds:

First round: They asked me puzzles such as finding the number of trails needed to find a defective piece in a given set of balls; if a magical pond doubles its water level every day and fills in 13 days, on which day will it be 1/4th filled; and in a horse race of 5 horses at a time, how many trails are needed to get the top 3 horses out of 25 horses, and so on. Programming questions involved linked lists, like reversing a linked list, and some programs on hashes. I was asked to write in Java if possible but used Python as it was easier.

Second round: They asked me to explain the difference between switches and routers, explain ARP, and write a program to find the maximum consecutive ones and zeros, equal in number, present in a given binary string. Some simple puzzles were written on the board, and I was asked to solve them.

Managerial Round:

Third round: They asked me to tell them one thing that makes me stand out from the crowd in my department (mine was CSE) and explain that thing in detail. I was also asked if I was interested in pursuing higher studies. (Always tell NO for obvious reasons

HR Round:

This was as usual: family background, strengths, and weaknesses. I was also asked how many times I had been rejected after reaching the HR round and how many companies I had attended before this one.