This was a pool campus placement which included a total of 4 colleges apprx 350+ students. The job profile was software and a part of the job profile mailed to us mentioned: Solid understanding of distributed
systems and networking principles, plus working knowledge of related disciplines,
e.g., computer security, algorithms, database, and operating systems.
Round 1: Aptitude test
It was a 1 hr long test and it consisted a total of 50 questions (Multiple choices).
20 questions were on quant. As they were time consuming, I would recommend you to start with the next set of 30 technical questions. The technical questions were based on electronics –Microprocessors (importance of all pins, interrupts, basics of peripheral ICs), Operating Systems (Scheduling Approaches, Memory Management, and processes), Flip Flops, All sorts of additions and subtraction (2’s complement, half binary etc), C programming (Find the error/output problems), Networking (TCP/IP, DNS etc)
Approximately 70 students were shortlisted for the 1st round of interviews.
Round 2: 1st technical Interview
It will be a one on one interview which generally lasts for 45 mins. Firstly they will go through your resume very closely. Don’t add unnecessary details in your resume and keep it short as possible. They firstly ask your comfort zone(could be either programming or testing based). I said programming and networking. I was then asked the following questions:
● What type of errors do you face while programming? What happens when your program goes to an infinite loop? How do you solve such errors?
● What happens when you don’t write the base case (return statement) of a recursive function? (Ans: Goes into an infinite loop and stack overflows and hence an exception will be called)
● Write a program to reverse a linked list. Then I was asked to use recursion in this program.
● Problems/errors in c++. Problems faced in JAVA.
● What is modulation? Different types of modulation. What is Phase modulation? Where is Frequency modulation used?
● What is the circuit diagram of an oscillator?
● In which layer does a router work? Explain the functioning of a router.
● Puzzle: consider an 3X3 array of dots. How can u join all the points without lifting your pen in 4 lines.
● In which sector would you like to see a growth? How will you contribute towards it?
Round 3: 2nd technical interview(they call it a managerial interview)
Again a one on one interview. It was much shorter than the 1st. Here they ask u only a few technical questions and a real life situation. I was asked the following function:
● Write a program to swap two integer nos. If u replace the two integer variable with char* pointers. How will the code change? Will it work?
● How to free a memory of a node (i.e. delete a node) in a linked list?
● The interviewer went through the extra curricular activities of my resume.
When he found cricket as my favorite pastime, he asked me to design a machine that will do the bowling. What all parameters will I feed in the system (eg. Variation in pace, line, length etc) and how can I improve it on different pitches? ( I mentioned about neural networks)
● Example of application layer protocols that use TCP/IP. Explain DNS. What exactly happens when you put google.com in the address bar of your browser?
Round 4: HR Interview
You should be totally relaxed here and be high on confidence. Be very genuine and straightforward. Apart from typical H.R questions, also prepare for such questions:
● What part of engineering has helped you the most? How?
● What other job offers do you have? Why do you want Cisco over that company?
● What do you know about Cisco?
Tips:
● Make one or two languages very stong. You should be able to write the pseudo code for any program which u may be asked.
● Do networking thoroughly. Working of all protocols, OSI layers etc. (Book: Data Communications and Networking by Forouzan)
● Do basics of operating systems. I was asked only in the aptitude test.( Operating systems by William Stallings)
● Data structures: Go through Linked lists very well. Practice the pseudo codes on the operations that can be performed on linked lists. Do basics of sorting,searching,hashing. (I did this majorly from internet. No
particular sites as such. But difficult problems on Linked lists would be quite simple to find)
● Electronics: Go through some of the microprocessor concepts like interrupts, pipelining etc. Do basics of important electronic components like OPAmp, Oscillators, Counters etc.
● Solve aptitude tests for programming languages and objective questions for O.S