Here is my journey to cracking a Fortune 100 Company!
Introduction
Cisco, headquartered in San Jose, develops and sells networking hardware, software, telecommunications equipment and other technology services and products. It is ranked as the 47th biggest corporation in the world by revenue!
So Naturally, a whole lot of questions would be around networking right? wrong.
The Process
Usually Cisco usually visits our campus in the month of June, but this time we got another opportunity in the month of Oct (Second times the charm huh?!) Details about the role can be found at the bottom.
Timeline of Events
Cisco (1st visit)
Pre-Placement Talk — 27th June
Cisco (2nd Visit) (My Lucky Charm)
Registrations Open — 7th October
Online Assessment — 13th October
Interviews — 28th October
Final Shortlists/Results — 28th October
Step 1: Cracking the Online Assessment
The Online Assessment format is a typical mix of MCQ’s (Multiple Choice Questions) and Coding.
All the Links to the resources I used are at the end of this post.
23 MCQ’s and 1 Coding Question
MCQ’s were around Operating Systems, Networks, C and Basic Aptitude. These questions were of medium difficulty and you could expect them to be more or less, what you study in you 1st-6th semesters (CS Branch).
The Coding question was based on arrays and was of easy difficulty. However, It took me sometime to understand the lengthy and tricky problem statement.
Conclusion : Expect Atleast 23 MCQ’s and 1 Coding Question (Easy — Medium Difficulty)
Step 2: Cracking the Technical Interviews
In total I had 3 Interviews, however 2 out of the 3 were of technical/techno-managerial nature.
Technical Interview — 1 :
Since, this was the second technical interview of my life. I was pretty nervous, however both the interviewers (who are my colleauges now :)) made me feel very comfortable.
They started out with OS concepts such as Race Condition, Semaphores and how they work. They wanted me to go in depth of few of them and I made sure to explain them with good examples.
Pro tip : Illustrate using Real life examples, whenever asked to explain Computer Fundamentals (Makes it more intuitive and increases understandability)
Then we went into Networking, as expected! networking questions are very common across technical interviews. The panel asked me about VPN, how it works and few other related concepts. Remember to use Real life examples to explain the concepts, it just makes you stand out from the competition.
By this time we were 20 mins into the interview, hence they switched to coding questions. The next 25 mins was basically DSA (Data structures and Algorithms)
Their strategy was simple, everytime I answered a question. They would step up the difficulty, one level higher. There were 3 questions I remember being asked :
1) Reverse Linked List in K groups
2) Zig — Zag Traversal
3) Loop Detection in Linkedin List
I was allowed to use the editor of my choice, of course I chose the notepad :)
I made sure to write the code and also simultaneously talk them through what I was trying to implement. I made sure that their wasn’t a moment of silence, after writing the code I would run them through some random testcases.
Pro tip : Make sure to deliver more than you are expected to!
In the end, I figured out that they were able to understand my approach and intuition behind writing that code to those problems. However, before the call ended, they asked me a puzzle :
How would you cut a cake into 8 equal pieces in 3 cuts? (Solution is Here)
I asked 2–3 questions about the role and then they ended the call.
Technical Interview — 2:
I was anxiously waiting for the result of round-1, however after 30 minutes I got the call for round-2.
This round was primarily centered around my resume, to be more precise : my projects. The Interviewer wanted me to go deep into my projects, trying to understand
Why this Project?
Why/Why not that tech stack?
How the project works
Why it didn’t have a Frontend/Backend or why it wasn’t deployed
Overall, this took pretty much most of the time. The last Question was a guesstimate.
The Interviewer asked : How many table tennis balls can you fit in the burj khalifa? (Related Solution Here)
Pro Tip : Learn about what the company does and any recent news about the company.
Finally after about 2–3 hours, I got the call for the HR round
Stage 3 : Cracking the HR Interviews and offer acceptance
This was a HR discussion which was very casual. The interviewer asked me if I was ready to relocate for the position and if I had plans for higher studies. I was obviously ready to relocate and told them I had no plans to study further. The interviewer explained about the internship program and it was a totally pleasant interview.
Finally later that night, we got the final shortlists. I had finally gotten in!
Conclusion : All the interviewers and panelists made me feel very comfortable about the whole process. Make sure to answer the questions to the point and tell them that you do not know the answer if you don’t know it. Do not lie on your resumes as they check it thoroughly and be honest!
Reference Links :
To Crack the Online Assesment :
Leetcode : https://leetcode.com/problemset/all/
GeeksForGeeks : https://practice.geeksforgeeks.org/explore?page=1&company[]=Cisco&sortBy=submissions
To Learn CS Fundamentals :
Computer Networks : https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/computer-network-tutorials/
Operating Systems : https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/operating-systems/
Puzzles : https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/puzzles/?ref=shm
Make sure you go through past interview experiences :
Link to My Interview Experience : Here
Details of the Role:
Offer Type: Spring Internship Dual Offer (Jan/Feb 2023)
Role: Software Engineer (DES/IT)
Wishing you all the best towards cracking your dream company and here is some Elon Musk motivation : ) #elonmusk
Want to know more about my Cisco Internship Experience?
Read more here : https://radicallyayush.medium.com/unlocking-the-cisco-experience-9b56aa56ff6a
