CISCO : Interview

After clearing written test it was the time of CISO interview.
I must say HR was cool man :).

I waited long from morning till evening and around 5 pm I got my turn.
Interviewer first asked some formal questions like
I : From where you belongs to?
I : Where you took your lunch?
I : Field of Interest?  I answered real time operating systems and then he asked some of the question on Operating systems an asked what is the difference b/w genreal OS and RTOS. It was simple as i explained it.
I :Then he asked are you interested in CISCO? I said obviously yes then he asked Why ?

I : Then one or two questions on Computer Architecture.
I : Paging and Virtual memory?
I : Now how about your programming skills?  I said i am good in C language.
I : C programs
He asked me to write program to reverse the linked list.

I : Without using sizeof operator find sizeof the structure having several data types within the structure and you don't know how many data elements are there in the structure.
I was unable to answer this question at that time
although it is simple but it did not strike in my mind.
  Answer is
Declare a null pointer to the structure suppose structure is

struct list 

            {

..

.

.

.

}

struct list *a=0;

a++;

printf("%d",a);

In this way it will print sizeof the structure.

Although Interview was good but i guess the reason of failure is he was not satisfied with my programming skills and more or less they want coder and a very good programmer also the post was of Software Engineer So.

Even i do have good programming skills but something went wrong.

God has something better for me so that is why CISCO did not take me.
Only What i can say is Unlucky CISCO :)

Finally an Advice: Do polish your programming skills all the simple programs on Linked Lists, Binary Search Trees, Sorting techniques, Simple programs like reverse the string, reverse the sentence, Simple programs on implementing Standard library functions in your own way.
"I am talking about the post of Software Engineer". CISCO also recruit on the post of Network Engineer where they need some core Computer Networks knowledge. But We were interviewed on the post of Software Engineer and they strictly require good programmer.
Polish your data structures and Algorithms and I guess you are in. Almost no stress on the core areas Like computer networks, operating systems.
So the keyword is Programming.    

It is not first failure of my life so be cool.


--Will contribute.