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

SDE - 1

Cisco
upvote
share-icon
3 rounds | 5 Coding problems

Interview preparation journey

expand-icon
Journey
n the lockdown period, I started my journey to where I am today. When the first lockdown prevailed I started to learn DSA, and I think that was the best time to learn DSA because no pressure from college was there for its useless assignments and all. In the lockdown of around 6 months, I learnt the basic algorithms and at the end I started practising on leetcode and codechef like platforms, they helped me a lot during my journey.
Application story
I got a message in my telegram group about the company visiting our campus for the hiring of SDE-1. As, I was in the fourth year, it was sure that I am going to apply for it. I started preparing accordingly and got selected at last.
Why selected/rejected for the role?
I was selected because I solved all problems they asked optimally. Before the HR round I practiced in front of mirror, which helped me a lot in the face to face to interview.
Preparation
Duration: 6 months
Topics: Computer Networks, Java, Python, DBMS, Data Structures OOPS, System Design, Algorithms, Dynamic Programming
Tip
Tip

Tip 1 : Practice at least 250 Questions, you can follow some sheet for that.
Tip 2 : Do at least 2 projects
Tip 3 : Do not take long breaks from practice.

Application process
Where: Campus
Eligibility: No backlogs
Resume Tip
Resume tip

Tip 1 : Focus on your skills, in which you feel really confident
Tip 2 : Do not lie anything in your resume

Interview rounds

01
Round
Medium
Online Coding Interview
Duration60 minutes
Interview date7 Jun 2022
Coding problem2

This was the first round mainly questions from the coding part were asked along with some MCQs from core engineering subjects.

1. Maximum Subarray Sum

Moderate
25m average time
75% success
0/80
Asked in companies
UberTata Consultancy Services (TCS)Dunzo

Given an array of numbers, find the maximum sum of any contiguous subarray of the array.


For example, given the array [34, -50, 42, 14, -5, 86], the maximum sum would be 137, since we would take elements 42, 14, -5, and 86.


Given the array [-5, -1, -8, -9], the maximum sum would be -1.


Follow up: Do this in O(N) time.

Problem approach

-

Try solving now

2. Wildcard Pattern Matching

Hard
50m average time
30% success
0/120
Asked in companies
AdobeGoldman SachsInfo Edge India (Naukri.com)

Given a text and a wildcard pattern of size N and M respectively, implement a wildcard pattern matching algorithm that finds if the wildcard pattern is matched with the text. The matching should cover the entire text not partial text.

The wildcard pattern can include the characters ‘?’ and ‘*’

 ‘?’ – matches any single character 
 ‘*’ – Matches any sequence of characters(sequence can be of length 0 or more)
Problem approach

-

Try solving now
02
Round
Medium
Online Coding Test
Duration50 minutes
Interview date17 Jun 2022
Coding problem2

Some basic concepts from DBMS were asked in this round and one coding question at last.

1. DBMS Questions

What do you understand by Data Model?
What is DML and DDL?
What is functional Dependency?
What is the E-R model?
Explain 1NF, 2NF, 3NF.
Explain ACID properties

2. Trapping Rain Water

Moderate
15m average time
80% success
0/80
Asked in companies
SalesforcePayPalHexaware Technologies

You have been given a long type array/list 'arr’ of size 'n’.


It represents an elevation map wherein 'arr[i]’ denotes the elevation of the 'ith' bar.



Note :
The width of each bar is the same and is equal to 1.
Example:
Input: ‘n’ = 6, ‘arr’ = [3, 0, 0, 2, 0, 4].

Output: 10

Explanation: Refer to the image for better comprehension:

Alt Text

Note :
You don't need to print anything. It has already been taken care of. Just implement the given function.
Problem approach

-

Try solving now
03
Round
Easy
HR Round
Duration20 minutes
Interview date25 Jun 2022
Coding problem1

1. Basic HR Questions

Introduce yourself
Why do you want to join us?
What are your hobbies?
What are your strengths and weakness?
What is your salary expectation?

Here's your problem of the day

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

Skill covered: Programming

To make an AI less repetitive in a long paragraph, you should increase:

Choose another skill to practice
Similar interview experiences
company logo
SDE - 1
2 rounds | 4 problems
Interviewed by Cisco
2369 views
0 comments
0 upvotes
company logo
SDE - 1
2 rounds | 4 problems
Interviewed by Cisco
1556 views
0 comments
0 upvotes
company logo
SDE - 1
3 rounds | 5 problems
Interviewed by Cisco
834 views
0 comments
0 upvotes
company logo
SDE - 1
3 rounds | 5 problems
Interviewed by Cisco
968 views
0 comments
0 upvotes
Companies with similar interview experiences
company logo
SDE - 1
5 rounds | 12 problems
Interviewed by Amazon
114453 views
24 comments
0 upvotes
company logo
SDE - 1
4 rounds | 5 problems
Interviewed by Microsoft
57719 views
5 comments
0 upvotes
company logo
SDE - 1
3 rounds | 7 problems
Interviewed by Amazon
34914 views
7 comments
0 upvotes