Cisco Systems Interview Experience (2-5 Years)

Recently I got an offer from Cisco Systems for the Software Engineer II role. I’m glad that I’m sharing my story here because I think the Interview experience section in GeeksforGeeks helped me a lot while I was going through the interview phase. 

Total Rounds (5 Rounds): Hackerrank Coding Round + Technical Round I + Technical Round II + Managerial Round + HR Round 

So let’s start with my Interview experience for each round step by step:

1. Hackerrank Coding Round: I submitted my resume on the Cisco official website “jobs.cisco.com” portal and got the Job description details from LinkedIn. The same day I received a mail from Hackerrank that Cisco invited you for an Online Challenge Invitation.  In this test, there are 5 Coding questions to solve in 90 minutes and I select Python3 for solving these coding problems (you can select the language of your choice). I was able to solve 3 questions with all test cases passed and one with 7 test cases and for the last one, I didn’t get time to attempt. 
   I got a call from Cisco after 10 days that we recognized you as a potential candidate for the role, so we set up your interview after 2 days (all 3 rounds will happen the same day). I said okay and started preparing again for the interview. 
2. Technical Interview I (1 Hour): I was set up my WebEx meeting in my system as well as on my phone in the morning. First-round started at 9 am. The interviewer joined the meeting and introduce himself and asked me to introduce myself. Then he directly jumped into my CV and asked questions about the mentioned projects (Personal + Work experience). I answered all the project-related questions. Then he asked questions from Git, Docker, Kubernetes, and questions related to Python: OOPs, Multithreading, Pyc, Zip, Set, etc.
   Then he asked me about one sorting problem and I solved it in my own editor with a shared screen, and then he said all the best for the next round. 
   Note: I have experienced in Golang, Docker, Kubernetes, Python and my role was also as Software Engineer (Cloud).

3. Technical Interview II (1 Hour): After 15 mins one other interviewer joined the same meeting for round 2 technical interviews. After an introduction in 2 mins, he sent me a coding problem in chat and asked to solve it. 

   The first problem is to sort given binary digits in Input: 0010101001101, Output: 0000000011111111. I explain my approach and code the solution. He asked me about the code that I’ve written and then moved to another coding question. 
   Second Problem: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/find-a-triplet-that-sum-to-a-given-value/
   I went through this question before in GeeksforGeeks but later he asked for just my approach, not to code the solution cause time was less. I explained and he satisfied with my explanation.

   Then he asked about my previous experience and started asking questions from Git, Bitbucket, Linux, Cloud Infrastructure, and Kubernetes.
   I have given all answers to his questions. Again he also said All the best for the next round. 

4. Managerial Round (1 Hour 20 mins): After 30 mins of launch break, the Manager joined the meeting with the same link. A brief introduction happened about my past experience, college projects, personal projects, hackathon project details mentioned in my Resume. 
   Tip: Make sure all the mentioned work in your Resume has done by you. Don’t add anything that you didn’t do. 

   Then he started asking question-related about Cloud Infrasture, Verticle vs Horizontal scaling, Deployment of stateful application, virtual memory and Linux commands. He started explaining about the role that he is interviewing for. I asked a few questions about the role, and he explained to me the details. This round took more than 1 hrs. 

5. HR Round (20 Mins): This round was so easy as you folks already know. Question about the company’s principle, goal, mission, etc. Make sure for this round you went through Company’s ABOUT section. I answered all of his questions very easily. Then he asked me about CTC and all. After 2-3 days, I got my offer letter.  The overall process took around 1 month from start to end. 

My Learning Resources:

• GeeksforGeeks Must do coding question + Reading Interview experiences
• LeetCode
• Youtube
• Udemy
• Last but not least: PRACTICE.PRACTICE.PRACTICE. The more you practice, the more confident you feel in the interview.
  

All the best!!
Happy Coding 🙂