Cisco Interview Experience For Software Engineering Summer Internship (Off-Campus) 2023

Initial Screening:

So it all started with a coding round, Code with Cisco organised by Cisco. Shortlisted candidates from this coding round would represent the college for Code-a-thon.

Code With Cisco:

It was a coding competition. There were three questions in the coding round.

Distribution: (Time: 1 hour, Date: 28th June 2023)

• 1st was easy-medium: It was a normal greedy-based question
• 2nd was medium-hard: It was based on 3D dp.
• 3rd was Hard: It was a DP question.

All of the above questions were new. Out of the above three questions, our team could solve 2 of them. Overall, I would categorise it more on the tough side, so we were pretty much happy and hoped for the best.

After around 1 week, shortlisted teams were announced. Sadly our team couldn’t qualify for it.

I lost all hope to appear for the interview because as mentioned earlier only candidates from qualified teams would stand a chance for the interview.

Fast forward to Sept 1, 2023. I received an email from Cisco.

We appreciate your participation in Code with Cisco.

While you were unable to qualify for the in-person Code-a-thon event, we are pleased to inform you that all members of your team will have an opportunity to attend an additional round of individual Cisco online assessments.

The online assessment was scheduled for 4th Sept 2023. Duration: (90 mins)

It had three roles, of which one had to be selected. Those were :

• Software engineering
• Application
• Networking

The test consisted of 42 questions. Out of which 40 were MCQ type (on CS fundamentals) and 2 coding questions. One thing that was strange about the assessment was, that for coding questions, there was only C, Python and Java available. Yes, C++ was not available.

• 40 MCQ questions, all were of EASY level: It had questions on Networking and Operating systems.
• 2 coding-based questions, both were Medium level: But as C++ wasn’t available. I could partially solve the first question but could not solve the second question.

I was pretty sure that I was not alone and faced difficulty with coding questions due to the unavailability of C++. Though I was prepared to receive a rejection, but down I had a sense of feeling, that I might qualify the for round.

Sept 8th, 2023

I received an email stating that I have qualified for the round. I was quite happy to see the mail. There were 2-3 prep talks organised by them for us to know about Cisco, work culture for interns, projects they work on and much more.

INTERVIEW:

27th Sept, 2023 (45 mins)

All of the selected candidates were put in a group in WebEx. My interview was at 9:30 AM in the morning. I was communicated by the HR in the group only to join the call.
Experience: The interview started with my introduction. The interviewer introduced himself as well, he has been working with Cisco for the last 15 years. Discussion started with my projects. It was a brief discussion on what was my motivation for the project, tech stacks and what it does. Then he put me 2 DSA questions. Both were of leetcode EASY level.

1st question: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/find-element-appears-array-every-element-appears-twice/

I started by explaining sub-optimal solutions hoping to give an optimal solution after that. However, he seemed satisfied with my first approach and did not ask me for an optimal solution.

2nd question: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/second-largest-element-in-binary-search-tree-bst/

Again, I started explaining with a sub-optimal solution by storing every node value using some extra space. He then asked for an optimal solution, to which I communicated my approach of using a parent pointer for the node while traversing and then I coded it. There was 1 edge case I missed, he stated that and then I changed my code accordingly.

And yes, they didn’t ask to run the code but just to write the code.

After that, he asked me some questions on Computer fundamentals mainly Operating systems.

• What is paging?
• What is main memory, and difference between main and secondary memory?
• What is segmentation?
• What is thrashing?

I could answer all the questions in this section except one. The interview ended with me asking the interviewer a question on the company’s culture for helping and growth of interns/new employees.

Overall interview went pretty well and the interviewer was helpful and calm. It was fun to appear in the interview.

EOD, we got a list of rejected candidates and luckily my name was not there. I was selected for the next round which was scheduled after 2 days.

29th Sept, 2023 (30 mins)

I joined the call, the interviewer was a middle-aged man, a project manager and was cheerful. I had some network problem in the middle of the interview so I got disconnected from the meeting. After I rejoined, he described his experience and problem with the internet when he was in college, it was a really fun story to hear.

For half an hour, we discussed on the projects and questions on my tech stack. There were some questions, but mostly it was a discussion and contained some situation-based questions.

Since my resume contained a project on blockchain, he asked me

• What is blockchain?
• Do you think the Indian govt? could adopt blockchain in the near future and others on my tech stack,
• Difference between SQL and NoSQL databases.
• For transactions, what database would you prefer and why?
• Explain the ACID principle and how would you apply each property when creating your project.?

Then he asked me if I had any questions for him, I asked the same question which I asked the first Interviewer.

For this round, I would say it varies a lot, it usually depends on the project manager, for some it had DSA questions and for some, it had questions just on Computer Networks.

After around 2-3 hours, the same day. an HR invited me to join the call. I was asked various questions about Cisco.

• What do you know about Cisco?
• 2 competitors of Cisco.
• Products of Cisco.
• Current affairs related to the company.

Followed by my aspirations and then she explained the intern role, duration and stipend, with a statement,

“This meeting does not mean that you are selected for the role, you will get a results in few days “. Lol

Verdict:

After around 10-15 days, we all received an email containing the list of shortlisted candidates and my name was not there.

Though I was not selected, the process is what I enjoyed the most.