Cisco Interview Experience | Virtual Hiring(On-Campus for Internship 2020-21)

Cisco visited our campus recently to offer a 2-month internship for the upcoming summer of 2021. An online coding round was conducted on hackerrank. The round consisted of 2 coding problems along with 15 MCQ’s.

Online Coding Round(60 mins): The languages allowed for this round were C/JAVA/Python. C++ was not allowed. The round had 2 programming questions and 15 MCQs with navigation across sections, allowed.

Coding Questions:

1. An array implementation problem wherein you were supposed to find the number of intervals inside the target interval.
2. It was this problem

https://www.codechef.com/problems/H1

MCQ’s: MCQ’s consisted of Aptitude, OS, Output based questions among other theoretical questions.

I had 3 Interview Rounds (2 Technical and 1 HR) after qualifying online round.

Round 1: Duration (60 mins)

1. I was asked to introduce myself. The introduction was immediately followed by a project discussion followed by theoretical questions on OS and OOPS.

2. These were the coding questions asked thereafter:  

• Diagonal Sum of a Binary Tree
• Python program to validate an IP Address
• Search in a row-wise and column-wise sorted matrix
• Detect and remove the loop in a linked list.

Code was required only for the first 2 questions approach/idea for the rest.

Round 2: Duration(60 mins)

1. A short introduction was followed by 2 coding questions

• Longest Bitonic Subsequence
• Reverse a Doubly Linked List

I had to code both the problems.

After this, I was asked questions on Operating System and OOPs. He then asked me if I had any questions for him. I asked a few, the discussion went on for a few minutes after which the round was concluded.

HR Round: Duration(10 mins)

The round was largely informative. I was told about the stipend, the work expected of a summer intern, the duration among other things. Lastly, she recorded my response for the preferred location and that was it.

The firm selected 10 odd people. I was one of them.  

With online interviews, your confidence is reflected only-in how you communicate; take care of that and think out loud whenever attempting problems. Also, use questions like ‘what are your interests’ and ‘walk me through your resume’ to your advantage to highlight your strong competencies. This will help you to direct the course of the interview and help establish a good image before the interviewer.