Was contacted through email about a phone interview for the position in about February. Has the phone interview a few weeks later. The phone interview went great. VERY BASIC technical questions. Spent most of the time on the phone talking about the company and the position. The guy interviewing me had already gone through the program so I just probed him for 30 mins. Got an email back about a month later saying I had been invited to NC for the Assessment Center interview. A very important thing to note is that after my phone interview it was over a month before I heard back from them. I sent my recruiter an email asking about my status and that may have been the key to me being invited to NC....i dk. The NC interview consisted of a GROUP presentation in which you have 15mins to study some new material and present. They look for group dynamics and how well you work together. There were 2 technical interviews on networking. They gave me a big packet to study after I was invited to NC. Everything in the packet was fair game. The key here is that "I dont know" is an acceptable answer. They just wanna see how much you do know and your capacity to learn and understand concepts. Over lunch they gave us another packet of abstract info to study for a solo presentation after lunch. The material was REALLY hard. They just want the see how much you picked up during the short time. Throughout the day we had breaks such as a tour of the facility, a "day in the life" presentation, and a benefits presentation. I felt really confident about my performance because I prepared for weeks. I gave it my best shot but unfortunately the next day I was informed that I was not selected to move on. I have no bad blood or regrets about the process. I did the best I could. The culture from my observations is that they hire A LOT of nerdy white guys. Out of the 75 or so employees I met during the process. Younger nerdy white males made up about 94%. I met like 3 women, a few people of indian descent and like 2 black people. I'm black so......i dk. The people I was interviewing against had big technical degrees from GA Tech, Penn State, RIT, Ohio State etc. I went to an HBCU so I felt that I was already at a disadvantage. The biggest thing I can say is prepare.....study, study, study. Cisco only wants the best....they kept saying that all day. They want people that fit the culture. All the people there are the same.....mostly nerdy young white guys. In my group there were 17 of us interviewing. We were the third and last group they were interviewing for positions. There were 2 other groups before us of about 20 people a piece and they were offering 24 positions. So thats about 8 positions a group. Overall it was a positive experience and i'm glad I got that far.

Online CV submission followed by a competency telephone interview which lasted an hour. A week before the full day assessment centre, several hundred pages of networking material was provided as preparation.