CISCO Interview Experience for Software Engineer

I sat for the CISCO On-campus Placements.

Round 1:Online Test(70 minutes)

This was an online test conducted on the Hacker-Rank platform.

15 MCQ-Electronics, Computer networks, Aptitude, and Data structure(No Negative marks)

2 Coding questions:

• Longest nonrepeating substring.
• the expression parenthesized in such a way that it gives max value for the expression. Expression has +,-,*

This is a variation of matrix chain multiplication.

There were around 330 candidates who sat for this exam and out of them 170 students were selected for the 2nd round.

Round 2:Technical interview

There were 4 roles(BU) that CISCO was offering this time namely: CX-Platform, CX-PSS, IT, Engineer, and SCO.
I was selected for the role of IT.

Now we were asked to assemble in the auditorium at around 8:30 in the morning. They marked our presence at 8:30 and then we were asked to wait for our interview process. I waited till 2:30 in the afternoon when my name was called up and I went in for my Technical interview.

It was a panel interview there were 3 panelists, I entered and the panelist welcomed me with a smile.

I’m naming P1, P2, and P3 panelists for readers.

One of the panelists just had a brief look at my resume for about 15 seconds. P1 just begin with Tell me about yourself.P1 asked me to explain my project, and I told clearly about my project .P2 asked me to tell the difference between Binary tree and trie data structures as I mentioned trie in my project.

P3 gave me one logical question.

Say, u have digit 8 which looks like 88888888 u need to use only the + operator such that the sum should be equal to 1000.

then P1 asked me how much I know about data structures,I answered that I would rate myself in Data Structures at around 8/10. Because back then I was not so fluent with Graphs.

he then asked me to write code for

• Find the middle node of the linked list.
• Given an array of size[1……1000] there are 2 numbers missing find them?

P2 asked whether I know the database and ask a few simple queries.

That was all for my Technical Round. It lasted for about 25 minutes. All three of them tested my basic problem-solving skills in DS, logical thinking, and whether I know the projects thoroughly. All I had to do was stay patient and calm. If you don’t know an answer then no need to panic. Just admit that you don’t know. There is literally no harm in that. I was asked to wait outside.

Round 3:Managerial interview

I entered and the interviewer welcomed me with a smile. She introduced herself as she is a manager of the Supply chain department.

The interviewer begins with Tel me about yourself. She said I got feedback from technical interviewers that I have good programming skills, and logical thinking and ask me to brief my projects.

• She asked me about my hobbies and college campus.
• Then she asked why Cisco.
• where do you see 5 years down the line?
• lastly, she says Do you have any questions, for which I asked
  • What exactly is the IT profile in Cisco?
  • How is Culture in Cisco?
  • What is the trend of IT in the future?

for each question she explained with good and satisfying points.

This lasts for about 40 minutes.

ROUND 4-HR

This was just a formality purpose.

they asked about few questions

• Whether your available for an internship in January?
• Whether your comfortable working 5 days a week for an internship?
• Are you planning to higher studies?
• Are you ok with the location of the company in Bangalore?

HR had a sheet, she just ticked with yes or no for all questions.

About an hour later, the results were announced by our Placement Director along with the CISCO Director and HR and

I was PLACED at CISCO.

How I prepared for placement:

I started to learn C++ in 5th SEM later I learned basic algorithms from geeks for geeks.

I solved problems from hackerrank, leetcode, and GeeksforGeeks

In the summer holidays, all I did was solve problems on the linked list, and trees, and watch videos of Tushar Roy, which helped me a lot.

so if I can prepare and crack, definitely you can too.