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Technical Round 1 (Around 60 Minutes)
Approximately 75 candidates appeared for the interview process.
The interview began with a brief introduction covering academic background, internships, technical skills, and relevant experience. This was followed by an in-depth discussion of internship work, where the interviewer focused on implementation details, design decisions, scalability, and security aspects of the projects.
A significant portion of the interview was dedicated to projects mentioned on the resume. Questions were not limited to project features; the interviewer also explored the motivation behind building them, architectural choices, challenges encountered during development, possible optimizations, and alternative design approaches. Having a strong understanding of every project on the resume proved to be essential.
The interviewer then moved on to core Computer Science fundamentals, asking questions from:
Database Management Systems (DBMS) Operating Systems (OS) Computer Networks (CN) Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) Machine Learning (ML)
The coding and problem-solving section consisted of three questions
The interview started with a detailed discussion of one of the major projects mentioned on the resume. The interviewer focused on understanding the overall system architecture, design decisions, backend workflow, AI/ML components (where applicable), implementation challenges, and real-world applications. Several follow-up questions were asked to evaluate depth of understanding rather than surface-level knowledge.
The remaining part of the interview consisted of rapid-fire technical questions covering:
Database Management Systems (DBMS) Operating Systems (OS) Computer Networks (CN) Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) Machine Learning (ML)
The interviewer also asked a few conceptual Data Structures and Algorithms (DSA) questions, including:
Selecting the most suitable data structure for different scenarios Time and space complexity analysis Comparing multiple approaches and discussing their trade-offs
Towards the end, the interviewer briefly spoke about the engineering culture, learning opportunities, and work environment at Cisco.
HR / ETR Round (Around 15 Minutes)
Approximately 21 candidates reached the final round.
This round was conversational and focused on understanding the candidate's career aspirations and preferences. The discussion included:
Overall interview experience Feedback on previous technical rounds Long-term career goals and higher education plans Preferred work location Internship stipend and compensation-related discussions Questions from the candidate
The interaction was relaxed and mainly aimed at assessing communication skills, cultural fit, and future plans.
Be thoroughly prepared to explain every project listed on your resume. Expect deep discussions on project architecture, implementation, scalability, and security. Revise all core Computer Science subjects (DBMS, OS, CN, OOP, and basic Machine Learning concepts). Practice debugging questions in addition to regular coding problems. Be comfortable explaining brute-force, optimized approaches, complexity analysis, and design decisions rather than only writing code.