First, I was contacted by the Director of Engineering asking about scheduling the interview. I was then scheduled for a Cisco Webex interview with four engineers from the team, each lasting 45-60 minutes back to back. Every interviewer was nice.

Second, I received an email from HR stating they wished to continue with me in the process and extend an offer. The HR representative said she would contact me for further steps.

I waited for weeks and then emailed her regarding the next steps. She replied that she would get back to me in a day or two, but I never heard anything from her, even after following up several times.

I then directly followed up with the Director of Engineering for the team, as it had been almost a month since my interview. I received a reply stating that they were unable to make an offer at that point due to a budget issue for the team.

I was very shocked by this response. I wondered why they would say they wished to continue with an offer before confirming their team's budget. I had lost some other opportunities during the month I was waiting for this one.

I never expected that a reputed company like Cisco would treat its applicants this way.

1. Programming questions on Link Lists.

2. Basic Networking, OS, and C programming concepts.