Cisco Interview Experience for SRE 2021

Screening Round: This round comprised of 25 MCQ and 1 Coding Question.

25 MCQ: 15(Network based) + 5(Aptitude) + 5(Time Complexity + DSA + DBMS)

1 Coding Question: Difficulty Medium.

Link: 809. Expressive Words:- https://leetcode.com/problems/expressive-words/

Around 97 students were shortlisted in that around 15 for SRE Role.

Cisco visited our campus on 18th August 2021.

Round 1(Technical Round): There were two panelists in this round. They were friendly and started the interview by introducing themselves.

Interview questions asked:

1. Introduce yourself.
2. Why do we need data structures?
3. LinkedList vs Array: When do you use it? Covered the following points in my answer. Insertion, Deletion, Fetching element ( LinkedList by traversing the entire list O(N) whereas in array O(1))-While answering them include time complexity too.
4. What is a Binary Search Tree?
5. BST vs Array vs LinkedList for retrieving and element – I chose BST since the time required would be less.
6. What are cloud services and the deployed models? – Saas, Paas, Iaas
7. Asked me which operating system I use.
8. What are demones: https://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/daemon
9. TCP/UDP
10. Asked me to explain one of my projects and followed by some simple questions to know your understanding.
11. Lastly, they asked me if I have any questions. I humbly asked them if there was an area I could improve upon. They answered saying you did pretty well and complimented me to be a confident person.
12. I asked them about their experience in CISCO as an SRE.

The interview lasted for about 1hr – 1hr 15 mins.

Verdict: I was qualified for the next round.

Tips: 

• If you don’t know some answers be honest and politely agree that you don’t have enough knowledge to answer.
• Have basic knowledge of data structures and algorithms.
• Know the technologies used in the project and why you used them.

Round 2(Managerial Round): There were two panelists in this round too. One of them was a team lead accompanied by this team member. They were friendly too and started the interview by introducing themselves.

Interview questions asked:

1. Introduce yourself.
2. Array vs LinkedList ( Same question again )
3. What is DNS? – I explained to them what DNS is also added what forward DNS and reverse DNS is. They seemed very satisfied.
4. They asked me if I wanted to explain any project which I was fond of. I took about 5 mins to explain one of the important projects in detail.
5. Follow-up questions on the project: Some basic questions regarding the technologies used and database. 
6. Gave me a scenario if I had a conflict with a co-worker how would I resolve it? 
7. Asked me about my other skills and interests: I spoke about my contributions to the clubs I was part of and my leadership roles there.

I don’t remember the rest of the questions. 

In short, this round is based on your resume and a few questions from networks and OOPs. 

The interview lasted for about 1hr.

Verdict: I was called for the HR round

Tips: 

• Know everything you have written in your resume and be prepared for follow-up questions.
• Since it’s an SRE role some network-related questions are always expected.
• Given a scenario always answer genuinely and keep in the team spirit.

Round 3(HR Round): This round was more of a mere formality.

Questions asked:

1. Are you willing to relocate? ( Bangalore, Chennai, Pune )
2. Asked me regarding my plans for further studying.
3. Asked me if I am aware of the compensation.

Verdict: I was offered (Internship + FTE as an SRE)

Around 12-13 students were selected at the end. 

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