Cisco Software Engineer I interview questions

On-site visit and interview with hiring manager, as well as, staff in the group. Explanation of product/technology developing. Group discussion answering questions about my previous work experiences and skill-sets.

Applied online and got a call from the HR to setup a pre-pre-screen! This was a 15-min. interview in which the HR went thru the motions talking abt my resume and experience. Few days later had a C-test. Not the easiest. If you are not a regular in C then you will take some time even though your C knowledge is complete. This was followed by two 45-min interviews with team member and engg. manager. I was very well prepared and the first interview went very well. He was thoroughly impressed. Then came the engg. manager. He seemed 'unprepared' about what to ask and started random questions on my experience. This also went well, later I thought some of my answers were incomplete but thought had done enough to get an onsite. Got a reject mail in a few days. Overall I thought the employees were very polite. It doesn't seem that Cisco needs brilliant people. People with good programming skills who know simple things like code optimization,data structures, few relevant projects go thru to the final stage. But,what I learned was that one position has about 10 people contesting and say 5 are upto the mark. After this I think the hiring decision becomes a subjective one . The engg. manager clearly seemed to have a bias towards CS guys. I was EE and his mood changed after hearing this.