I applied through a recruiter. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Cisco (Bengaluru) in Dec 2021
Interview
The interview process was a little interesting. First-round was an online assessment conducted on the Hacerrank platform, then after 2 days, I got a call for scheduling a series of interviews from a cisco Recuriter. He was really nice and explained the entire interview process.
Why it was interesting because there was an interview drive going on called blind interviews where interviewers of the first 2 technical rounds will not have your resume and you will be judged entirely on your skills and job requirements. and even while joining the virtual interview you have to join with the candidate code(for ex candidate_10), not with your name.
I gave both technical rounds and both went very well then after an hour, I got a call from the recruiter that I have cleared my technical rounds and she wants to schedule a managerial round on the same day. I and the hiring manager had a great conversation. After a week I got a call from the recruiter that My profile has been shortlisted.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Round1 - Online assessment: It happened on Hacker rank, there were 4 coding questions and 6 MCQs which we have to solve in 75 mins. out of 4, 2 coding questions were related to the linked list and the other 2 were related to Arrays and general programming
Round2 - virtual Interview:
1) How a program works from the operating system point of view(how it starts in an operating system)
2) Questions related to ready queue, scheduling and main memory
3) questions related to Binary search with complexity
4) data structures and algorithm: focused areas were linked list, stack, array
5) Medium complexity puzzle
Round3 - virtual Interview:
1) Operating system concepts in deep: focused on static and dynamic loading of a program.
2) This job position was a python developer role so there were questions on python, OOPs, python references, decorators, etc.
3) Program to remove duplicate from a list in python in place with elements order conservation.
Round4: Manager Round virtual:
1) Questions about my project
2) Question on how you going to approach upliftment of a project
3) some behavioral questions.
I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at Cisco (Chicago, IL)
Interview
March 13th; Took a hackerrank exam, 3 easy-med leetcode DSAs. One was rotating a matrix and the other was a binary search. And the third was a basic sql. Did not hear back until July.
Standard panel, very simple leetcodes. reverse linked list kind of vibe s . I was literarly asked about how a linked list is structured and reversing it. there was almost no friction which I was shocked by one of the reason I did not accept
I applied online. I interviewed at Cisco (Bengaluru) in Jun 2026
Interview
The interview started well and covered backend concepts, Java, system design, and coding. I answered the questions confidently and had a positive interaction throughout.
After receiving the rejection, I spoke with HR to understand the feedback. I was informed that the interviewer believed I was looking at answers during the interview. This came as a surprise because I was not referring to any external material. I have a habit of looking away while thinking or recalling concepts, which I believe may have been misunderstood.
I wish this concern had been raised during the interview so I could have clarified it immediately. If there are concerns about a candidate’s behavior, discussing them in real time or asking for a room scan can help avoid misunderstandings.
Overall, the interview questions were fair, but I feel my evaluation was influenced by this misunderstanding rather than my technical performance.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Sort a nearly sorted array. I was asked for an optimal solution and discussed the time and space complexity.