Cisco Ideathon Interview Experience for Consultant Engineer 2021

Round 1: Cisco Ideathon Preliminary Test 55 Ques- 60 Minutes

1. 25 Networking and CCNA questions
2. 15 Programming MCQs
3. 15 Aptitude

Networking questions were mainly around subnetting and apart from basics, a few

Programming MCQs had code snippets in LINUX, C++ too.

Round 2a (Video Submission): 3 different Problem domains were given. We had to choose one domain, identify a problem, and shoot a 90-sec video recording of ourselves briefly explaining a solution for it.

Round 2b (Competency test): Around 60 competency-based questions were to be answered in around 20 mins or so.

Round 3(UR Online Assessment): 25 Aptitude + 1 coding- 60 Minutes. I did aptitude in 40 mins and got most of them right. But as only 20 mins were left for solving the coding question, I couldn’t solve it completely and my code passed only half of the test cases.

In about 3 days we got the shortlist of students who cleared Round-3 and were asked to attend Face to Face interviews

The role that we were shortlisted was of CX(Consultant Engineer).

Interview: In the Interview, we had 3 rounds, TR+MR+HR

TR: There were 2 interviewers. One was asking more of general programming basics, but deep though. Another interviewer was solely asking questions on networking and CCNA. Every interview round starts with “ Tell me About yourself “ . I don’t remember those general questions. They were mostly from my resume and about my projects. If we’ve already given 1 or 2 interviews earlier, we can easily answer them.

But for the Networking part,

1. Explain layers of OSI
2. Briefly summarize what you’ve learned in CCNA courses
3. Functionality of DLL
4. What is Checksum and how does it work. (explained)
5. Difference between switch and router
6. Explain how router sends packets(explained that it does it through routing table)
7. List a few Routing algorithms(I could remember only one at that time, he gave hints on a few more and asked me how they work )
8. So you said that switch operates on layer2, so how does it work?

Finally, do you have any questions for us?

By the end of the day, we got the shortlist of TR cleared students and the schedule for MR.

MR was after 1 day.

MR: After the basic Tell Me About Yourself, he asked me directly about how a switch works. I told him briefly. Then he asked me for a brainstormer. That was like a small story and asked a question based on it at the end.

In the end, he asked me if I had any questions for him. Then we got the shortlist and HR was scheduled the same day.

HR: In HR, apart from Tell me about Yourself, the only question she asked me was about the project that is very dear to me and what were the difficulties I faced while doing it. HR was mostly held for briefing the incentives we’d be getting if we get selected for the role. She gave a very brief salary breakdown for the FTE offer and also briefed about the internship.

She asked me if I had any doubts. I asked a few related to the offer. Finally, she said that results would be declared only after further internal evaluation and It’d take about a week or two.

After about 3-4 days, we got our final results.

Result: Selected