Cisco interview experience Real time questions & tips from candidates to crack your interview

Consulting Engineer

Cisco
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6 rounds | 7 Coding problems

Interview preparation journey

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Preparation
Duration: 3 months
Topics: OOPS concepts, Data Structures and Algorithms, Fundamentals of all the core Computer Science subjects (mainly focusing on OS, Networking, DBMS), Coding questions (mainly Arrays, Strings, Trees, Graphs), Aptitude and logical reasoning.
Tip
Tip

Tip 1 : Prepare aptitude and coding based questions until you are good with the basics and take notes. 
Tip 2 : Be clear about the applied job role, have a good knowledge about your resume and the projects mentioned in it.
Tip 3 : Come prepared and be confident to be able to confront new problems and conquer them yourself.

Application process
Where: Other
Eligibility: CGPA 7 and above, NetAcad courses like: CCNA (Module 1 & 2) + Python, DevNet, Networking Essentials + Python.
Resume Tip
Resume tip

Tip 1 : Add technical skills along with any IT certifications.
Tip 2 : Be real and accurate, do not over do.

Interview rounds

01
Round
Easy
Online Coding Interview
Duration60 minutes
Interview date17 Sep 2021
Coding problem1

The online preliminary quiz round comprised of two sections: a mandatory section and an advanced section with options (Mandatory Section + Advanced Networking, Mandatory Section + Advanced Software Programming). It was conducted on Mettl platform in the morning. I only remember 1 coding question from this round.

1. Longest Common Subsequence

Moderate
39m average time
0/80
Asked in companies
PayPalShareChatOla

Given two strings, 'S' and 'T' with lengths 'M' and 'N', find the length of the 'Longest Common Subsequence'.

For a string 'str'(per se) of length K, the subsequences are the strings containing characters in the same relative order as they are present in 'str,' but not necessarily contiguous. Subsequences contain all the strings of length varying from 0 to K.

Example :
Subsequences of string "abc" are:  ""(empty string), a, b, c, ab, bc, ac, abc.
Problem approach

I started solving this problem with a brute force recursion approach.
Step 1: When either of the strings were empty, the LCS is 0.
Step 2: Else, if the current character of the strings matched, I checked for the previous prefix of the whole string, and added 1 to the answer.
Step 3: If the characters didn’t match, I took the maximum of LCS(string1_length - 1, string2_length) and LCS(string1_length, string2_length - 1).

After this I started solving it through an optimal approach. i solved this by using Dynamic Programming, and memoizing the results into an DP array, where DP[i][j] represents the length of the Longest Common Subsequence of the Strings from [0, i - 1] and from [0, j - 1].

Try solving now
02
Round
Medium
Assignment
Duration10 minutes
Interview date27 Sep 2021
Coding problem2

1. Technical Question

Knowing customer's real time pulse is a huge challenge today. How can you leverage data science to help in predicting customer experience/sentiment proactively unlike the existing survey mechanisms which are reactive in nature? (Hint: Think about factors that can influence customer experience)

2. Situation Based Problem

Given the challenges that exist in our country using possible sensor data from future cars, derive solutions that can help reduce the carbon footprint that can include things like carbon tax, car pooling detection and matching, traffic re-routing among many other things.

03
Round
Medium
Online Coding Test
Duration60 minutes
Interview date24 Sep 2021
Coding problem1

1. Minimum Jumps

Moderate
25m average time
75% success
0/80
Asked in companies
OYOAmazonMorgan Stanley

Bob lives with his wife in a city named Berland. Bob is a good husband, so he goes out with his wife every Friday to ‘Arcade’ mall.

‘Arcade’ is a very famous mall in Berland. It has a very unique transportation method between shops. Since the shops in the mall are laying in a straight line, you can jump on a very advanced trampoline from the shop i, and land in any shop between (i) to (i + Arr[i]), where Arr[i] is a constant given for each shop.

There are N shops in the mall, numbered from 0 to N-1. Bob's wife starts her shopping journey from shop 0 and ends it in shop N-1. As the mall is very crowded on Fridays, unfortunately, Bob gets lost from his wife. So he wants to know, what is the minimum number of trampoline jumps from shop 0 he has to make in order to reach shop N-1 and see his wife again. If it is impossible to reach the last shop, return -1.

Problem approach

The solution is quite simple if the height of wall is less than or equal to x, only one jump in that wall is required else we can calculate it by height of wall-(climb up-climb down) and get the jumps required.

Try solving now
04
Round
Medium
Face to Face
Duration45 minutes
Interview date12 Nov 2021
Coding problem1

1. Technical Question

How will you use a linked list to simulate 3 TCP/IP packets?

Problem approach

In order to use a linked list to simulate 3 TCP/IP packets, all the packets should have a source IP, a destination IP, and some data (at least 20 characters).

05
Round
Easy
Face to Face
Duration30 minutes
Interview date15 Nov 2021
Coding problem1

1. DBMS Questions

What are the advantages of DBMS?

What do you mean by durability in DBMS?

What is normalization?

06
Round
Easy
HR Round
Duration45 minutes
Interview date15 Nov 2021
Coding problem1

1. Basic HR Questions

1. Why do you want to join Cisco? 

2. Mention your strength and weakness. 

3. Where do you see yourself in the next 5 years?

Here's your problem of the day

Solving this problem will increase your chance to get selected in this company

Skill covered: Programming

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