Current Status: New Grad 2023 Passout

Education Qualification: Bachelor of Engineering Computers at a Tier 3 college

Position: Software Engineer at Cisco ( Not sure of which level, haven't recieved the offer letter yet, just Letter of Intent )

Location: Bengaluru, India

Application: Applied through a referral.

Online Assessment: Received a hackerrank test link, There were:

1. An easy coding problem.
2. A couple of MCQs covering most of the CS fundamental topics
3. A medium level DP problem (Similar to Burst Balloons on leetcode)

Then I got a mail that I was shortlisted for the interviews and was sent a link to a webex space.
We had to send a redacted resume, Things like our college, language, name, etc had to be hidden in it. I really liked this idea of anonymity and a bias free interview experience. Even in the interview we weren't suppoed to mention our name or college or any personal info, We were just allowed to mention a candidate code.

Technical Interview 1:

• The interviewer looked like an experienced Software Engineer, He went through my resume and asked about projects, skills, internships, etc.
• He then deep dived into my first project, We had a technical discussion about its architecture, its flaws, its performance, testing, what could have been better, etc.
• And then we had some technical discussion about some CNS, OS, Data structures and Algorithms concepts.
• Then there was a very easy coding problem ( I guess it was just for checking the implementation skills)
• Then we had some discussion about his experiences at Cisco, The feedback was positive.

Technical Interview 2:

• The interviwer was an experienced Software Engineer, He too went through my resume and asked about my projects, internships.
• I explained my project, then we had some technical discussion about it.
• Then there was a coding problem which was building up cases by cases, it was like an open-ended coding problem.
• Then we had technical discussion on OS concepts, real-life OS concepts on MacOS
• Then I asked for feedback and the feedback was good.

Technical + Managerial:

• A panel of 3, seemed like very highly experienced Software Engineers were there.
• After a brief introduction, They started with a problem, A situation.
• It was an open ended problem which contained very parts, was like a real life problem.
• The problem tested DBMS skills, CN skills, Graph Algorithms, and many other concepts.
• The discussions went really low-level and took around 1Hr.
• And then there was a medium level bit manipulation coding problem, first the approach and then the code.
• Then there was some discussion about life at Cisco
• This round really made me sweat.

HR interview:

• A very short round, around 15min.
• First some brief introduction.
• Some casual talks about my hobbies, interests, etc.
• Asked if I was willing to relocate to Bengaluru, if selected.
• Asked if I had any other offers, I told him about my offer at a MNC custodian bank as a Software Engineer.
• And then a discussion about cisco and what it does.

The same day I got a Letter of Intent Mail and a compensation was sent. The compensation can be found Here.

Thank you for reading this experience, I hope it helps. 🙂

With ❤️