Status: New grad, B. Tech. CSE, Tier 2
Prior Experience: 0 years

Online Assessment [28 June 2023] (1 hr):

This was a team event, and each team contained 3 participants.

Coding Questions:

First problem was similar to https://codeforces.com/problemset/problem/1132/F.
Second problem was similar to https://cses.fi/problemset/task/1097.
The third problem was a simple Greedy.

My team completed these three within 30 minutes.

Only 23 teams (69 students) were invited for the onsite hackathon.

Onsite hackathon [13th & 14th July 2023]:

This hackathon was the highlight of Code with Cisco event. The Cisco Emerging Talent Recruitment team (ETR) team organised this event. Webex was used for smooth coordination of the event. It was promised that each team present in the onsite hackathon will get to be a part of the Cisco recruitment process.

The hackathon had three problem statements -

1. The first statement asked participants to make a visualisation tool for a given graph.
2. The second statement asked participants to make a game related to Cyber Security.
3. The last statement was related to the Dynamic Connectivity Problem of Graphs.

Each problem statement had a winner team, who won a Go-Pro for each team member.

The Interviews

A student connect session was conducted and we were told that Cisco is doing an inclusive hiring this time. We were all asked to hide details like our Name, College name, CGPA, Branch, etc. from our resumes so that the hiring would be solely based on one’s skills.

Round 1 - Tech [1 Sep 2023] (1 hr):

The interviewer was an SDE 2 at Cisco. She told me she was working on Cisco’s NX-OS which was written in C language.

1. She asked me questions related to C language (function pointers, pointers, memory allocation, dynamic memory, memory leaks).
2. She asked me different questions about OS (booting), DBMS and CN (IP vs. MAC [NIC Card] address with details).
3. We talked about basic data structures like stack and queue.
4. She also asked me some questions related to Python as I had mentioned it in my resume.

Round 2 - Tech + HR Round [1 Sep 2023] (1.5 hr):

In this round, the interviewer mainly focused on my resume. He was very interested in my internships, so we talked about my internship the entire time.

Round 3 - Exec Round (2 Interviewers) [1 Sep 2023] (1.5 hr):

1. Basic questions about OOPS.
2. Questions about my projects.
3. Easy questions related to sorting. One interviewer wanted to know a way to sort an array in O(n). When asking for hints, he said the array can be stored as some other DS. So I told him how an inorder traversal of a BST can give me a sorted array in O(n) time. He seemed satisfied.
4. Coding Question - Intersection of 2 linked lists. Initially he told me the wrong problem, and I had to fix the problem and then discuss the solution.
5. Why do you want to join Cisco?

Round 4 - ETR Connect [1 Sep 2023] (15 min):

1. Would you be able to relocate to BLR?
2. Are you available for a 6 month internship from January?
3. Other Stipend and Salary discussions.

Result - Selected

Check out the compensation details here.