How Did I land up at Cisco Systems

Sept, 2000

Short Background:

I was picked up by Cisco from the campus. It was a job beyuond my dreams. My dream jobs were Sun and probably Novell (as my primary interests were OS and Networking and I was a linux geek back then)

Amit Phadnis had come for recruitment on that day - who eventually became my manager at Cisco

I was from Mechanical background but with my interests and my knowledge in the computer arena, I never had issues passing the written tests. It was always the interviews that used to last anywhere north of 5 mins

Technical Interview - Starts:

I stepped inside the interview room where I had been multiple times already for other companies. I shook hands with the two interviewers and grabbed my chair

The interview started with my background (arggh.. Mechanical Engineering). Amit told - "well, we recruit some of the best people from CS and EE.. we are the best company.. one of the largest market cap (and all that kinda crap that I knew and had heard them during PPT)". I assured them that I can surprise them with my knowledge. Amit scanned my resume once more for a second

Amit looked at his watch uninterestingly and told his partner - "the next candidate would not be in before the next 25 mins. Why dont we ask him something." Voila, my chance to convince them!

Technical Interview - Lasts Forever:
So Amit started with some good C questions like pointers-to-pointers, pointers-to-functions, pointer-to-strings and changing in functions, static extern variables et all. I did fairly well. I was giving them examples of where I have used those trying to convince them that I knew more than what they think I know

So we moved up to Data Structures and then to Operating System and then to Networking. By this time, I knew it was well past 30 mins now and I had done pretty good - missing only one or so! I could feel that Amit was convinced that I knew what I was talking about

Technical Interview - Turning the Tables:

Amit's next statement surprised me - "we hire only CS and EE students but exceptions can be made." And he asked me a couple of questions about when I can join, is moving to a different city (Bangalore) an issue et all

I was further surprised (and probably excited) when Amit started to convince me why Cisco is a good choice for me. He was talking about the challenges, the best company and compensation philosophy (stocks and stuff). He, then, explained me about the HR interview The tables had turned over now!

This interview lasted for 50+ mins when I glanced at my watch as I exited out of the interview room. Amit was apolozing the next candidate waiting and asked him to move in

Interview with HR:

Shiny Samuel was the HR person that visited IIT-Kanpur campus that year. Amit had a closed door meeting with Shiny and I just hoped that HR gets convinced (I have heard of horrible HR stories from seniors - and I was praising that this one is a kind one)

Amit asked me to discuss with Shiny and handed me his card and left to interview the next candidate

The first few sentences from Shiny were to ease me. This was an uncomfortable feeling because I was thinking that the worst part is about to come and she is preparing me for it. Or probably she is thinking the best way to put forth the worst part. Anwyay, it was the bad couple of mins. She then told me "they hire only CS and EE students.. choose the best engineers around the world.. legal issues if they take any other student beyuond CS and EE"

And then the most relaxing part followed that Amit and she could make an outside campus offer - even though they are hiring within the campus. I had no problem for this (its Cisco that I would be working with!). I told her that its a dream come true for me and she could be assured that I have passion for my work et all

Time for the Offer Letter:Bangalore Dec, 2000
It was the winter break when I visited Bangalore. I stayed with S Shridhar (my college room mate) who was then working in Wipro

I visited Cisco Office couple of times. On my first visit, I met with Shiny who asked me to meet with Amit and that he would ask me to join the team. She would progress as per Amit's instructions. I went to meet Amit who told me that he would take care of the process and I meet with him on 2nd Jan. He then asked me to meet with couple of folks from his team, so I met with Navneet Aggarwal and B L Balaji. The team was leaving for lunch and I had a glance of the whole team of around 30 people. On my second visit, I met with Amit and got my offer letter (finally!)


Part of Cisco Family: Bangalore June, 2001

I joined Cisco as a software engineer. I met with other members who joined Cisco with me - we were part of the first batch to join in that cycle. There would be people joining every week for the next 5-6 weeks

We went through orientation period of 1 week where we performed some team exercises and were made aware of Human Resources, cisco products, product life-cycles, software development process etc. It was excitement for me, for sure

The other folks realizing that I was from Mechanical Branch and that I was IIT-Kanpur, they asked me all sort of curiosity questions, and I definitely felt an aura around me

And hey, I am part of Cisco Family now and I owe it to Amit Phadnis!