I applied through college or university. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at Cisco (Bengaluru) in Feb 2015
Interview
The recruitment was a one day process.The process till you get your offer letter is a bit long. 1 week after my interview, i was asked to send my resume, 6 weeks after that i was asked to fill my details in Cisco website, 1 week after that i got a mail from HireRight for background verification, 1 week after that i got a confirmation of my background verification completion, 1 week after that i got my Offer Letter ;). so the process overall took 2 and half months. you should have some patience :)
First round was online test at their place. The questions were more on c and c++, Few on aptitude, networking and electronics. This was followed by 2 technical interviews, one managerial interview and a HR interview.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Technical Rounds:
First round they asked me puzzles of finding the number of trails needed to find defective piece in given set of balls, if a magical pond with balls in it doubling every day fills pond in 13 days, on which day it will be filled 1/4th, in a horse race of 5 horses at a time, how many trails are needed to get the top 3 horses out of 25 horses and so on of these types. Programming was pgms on liked list like reversing linked list, and some pgms on hashes. He told me to write in java if possible. I used python as it was easier.
Second round he asked me to explain difference between switches and routers, explain ARP, write a pgm to find max consecutive one's n zero's equal in number present in the given binary string, some simple puzzles were written on board, he told me to solve them.
Managerial round:
Third round he asked me to tell any one thing that makes me stand out of crowd in my department (mine was CSE) and explain that thing in detail. Also asked whether i was interested in pursuing higher studies. (Always tell NO for obvious reasons :p )
HR round:
This was as usual, family background, strength n weakness about you. He also asked how many times i have been rejected after reaching till HR round and also how many companies i attended before this.
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.