Table of Contents
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Intoduction
Cisco’s networking solutions can connect people, computer networks and computing devices, allowing the people to access or transfer data without having differences in time, place or type of computer system. Cisco provides comprehensive networking solutions that clients utilise to build a unified data infrastructure of their own or to connect to someone else’s network. Cisco offers the industry’s widest range of hardware products that operate to form information networks or give people access to those networks; Cisco IOS® software, which enables networked applications and provides network services.
Why Join in Cisco?
Joining Cisco can be an attractive option for many reasons, particularly for individuals in technology, networking, and innovation-focused careers. Here are key reasons why Cisco stands out:
1. Global Leader in Networking and Technology
- Cisco is a recognized global leader in networking, telecommunications, and cybersecurity solutions. Working with Cisco gives you the chance to be part of cutting-edge innovations in IT and network infrastructure.
2. Innovative Work Environment
- Cisco is known for its focus on innovation, providing opportunities to work on new technologies like IoT (Internet of Things), AI (Artificial Intelligence), cloud computing, and 5G networks. Employees are encouraged to think creatively and push technological boundaries.
3. Learning and Development Opportunities
- Cisco offers extensive opportunities for professional growth through certifications, continuous learning programs, and internal training. The widely respected Cisco Certifications (such as CCNA, CCNP, and CCIE) can boost your career significantly.
4. Strong Corporate Culture
- Cisco fosters a culture of inclusivity, collaboration, and social responsibility. It has been consistently ranked as one of the best places to work globally, emphasizing work-life balance, diversity, and employee well-being.
5. Global Reach and Impact
- Cisco’s solutions power many of the world’s largest organizations and critical infrastructures, providing an opportunity to contribute to projects that have a global impact across industries like healthcare, education, finance, and more.
6. Cutting-edge Automation and AI Initiatives
- Cisco is a leader in automation and AI-driven technologies, making it a great place for engineers and developers focused on automation testing, network automation, and software development to grow their skills and work on transformative projects.
7. Social Responsibility and Sustainability
- Cisco places a strong emphasis on corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives, focusing on education, environmental sustainability, and giving back to communities. Employees can engage in meaningful work through CSR programs.
8. Career Stability and Growth
- With its strong market presence and continuous growth, Cisco offers long-term career stability. The company is known for promoting from within and offering career advancement opportunities across various departments.
9. Diverse Opportunities Across Domains
- Cisco is not just a networking company. It offers career paths in software development, cybersecurity, automation testing, cloud engineering, data science, sales, marketing, and more, giving you the flexibility to explore different domains.
10. Competitive Compensation and Benefits
- Cisco offers competitive salaries, performance-based bonuses, and comprehensive benefits packages, including health insurance, retirement plans, and stock options, making it a financially rewarding workplace.
Cisco Recruitment Process
1: What is software testing?
1. Interview Rounds
1. Online Assessment Test:
- Aptitude Test: Questions around Probability, Permutations and Combinations, Algebra, Simple & Compound Interest, Number Series, Profit and Loss, etc.
- Technical Test: Questions around Computer Networking, C, Algorithms, Data Structures as well as digital electronics, CMOS and Microprocessor, etc.
2. Technical Interview Rounds:
In the technical interview rounds, the interviewer may ask questions on various Computer fundamentals like Data Structures and Algorithms, Operating Systems, Algorithms, Database Management, Networking etc. Candidates will be tested in terms of in-depth knowledge in all the aspects of domains related to Computer Science and Networking. Other technical questions are normally asked from the projects or internships mentioned in the CV. The company primarily focuses on a candidate’s approach towards a particular problem.
3. HR Interview:
In this round, HR will usually question you about the job role, why do you want to join Cisco, the most challenging project that you were involved in, etc. Here the questions will be majorly asked from your CV. Overall, you are required to be prepared well before this interview round and have a fair knowledge of Cisco and the stream from which you have got graduated/experienced.
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Cisco Interview Preparation Tips for Automation Testing
Essentially, the Cisco interview measures your critical thinking, coding, and problem-solving skills. Even though the technical interview phase might appear challenging at first, you can easily pass it if you prepare properly. The following are some pointers to help you ace your Cisco interview:
- Give examples to illustrate: Give pertinent instances of your prior successes and describe how you contributed to the team environment.
- Demonstrate your superiority: Explain how you keep up with the industry’s advancements. Demonstrate your ability to adapt to Cisco’s fast-paced culture.
- Be forward-thinking: You could attempt to establish a rapport with the interviewer because you never know when you could find that person valuable. It can be a little challenging to inquire about career advancement during an interview. Communicate to the interviewer your interest in the current position being offered. Demonstrate your desire to grow and be tested.
- Learn about the company: Research about the Cisco company and connect with Cisco’s thought leaders on social media. This will allow you to engage with them and understand a lot more things about the company. Be ready to face questions around leadership, how you react to change, earn trust and influence others at all levels.
- Be genuine and passionate: Try to be yourself and be authentic during the interview. Display that you will be a great asset to the company. Put out your thoughts positively and explain how have you learned from challenging situations in your past.
Top Cisco Automation Testing Interview Questions and Answers
1. What is Automation Testing?
Answer: Automation testing uses software tools to execute test cases and compare the results with expected outcomes, minimizing manual intervention. The primary goal of automated testing is to save time, effort, and money on repetitive tests that don’t change frequently.
Automation testing helps teams and organizations automate the testing efforts, in turn reducing the need for human intervention and thus achieving greater speed, reliability, and efficiency. It also helps speed up the development cycle, as the developers get quick feedback and can iterate quickly.
2. What is the test automation pyramid?
Answer: The test automation pyramid was first developed by Martin Fowler and unveiled in 2012. It is a method for figuring out how to employ the many types of testing automation that are available as efficiently as possible.The test pyramid’s fundamental principle is to have a small number of comprehensive user interface (UI) tests and a big number of UI unit tests.
3. What is the role of Python in automation testing?
Answer: Python is commonly used for scripting in automation testing because of its simplicity, versatility, and support for testing frameworks like Selenium and PyTest.
4. Explain the difference between manual testing and automation testing.
Answer: Manual testing requires human effort for test execution, while automation testing uses tools and scripts to perform the same tasks automatically, saving time and reducing errors.
5. Which Python frameworks are popular for test automation?
Answer: Common Python test automation frameworks include Selenium, PyTest, UnitTest, Robot Framework, and Behave. A software or solution that adheres to best practices and guidelines to facilitate the automation process is called an automation testing framework. In order to support the testing, this framework includes a number of functional libraries, object details, test data sources, methods, and reusable models.
6. What is Selenium, and how does it integrate with Python?
Answer: Selenium is a powerful tool for automating web browsers. Python supports Selenium with bindings, allowing you to write scripts to control browsers for testing web applications.
7. What are the different types of testing you can automate?
Answer: Types of testing that can be automated include functional testing, regression testing, smoke testing, performance testing, and unit testing.
8. How would you handle exceptions in Python test scripts?
Answer: In Python, exceptions can be handled using try, except, and finally blocks to catch and manage errors during test execution.
9. What is a test framework, and why is it important in automation?
Answer: A test framework provides a structure for organizing test cases and scripts. It standardizes the testing process, making it easier to maintain, execute, and report tests.
10. What is automated regression testing?
- Software is never finished. Bug fixes, new features, and other improvements are continuously being made by the developers. It’s possible that all of this new code will interfere with the functionality that was already in place.
- After downloading and installing a new release, users don’t like utilizing a defective product. Regardless of the software version customers are using, they anticipate a dependable and consistent experience.
11. How do you integrate Selenium with a CI/CD pipeline like Jenkins?
Answer: You can integrate Selenium with Jenkins by creating a Jenkins job to trigger Selenium scripts. Test results can be configured to display in Jenkins using plugins.
12. What are locators in Selenium?
Answer: Locators are methods used to find elements on a webpage. Common locators in Selenium include ID, Name, XPath, CSS Selector, Link Text, and Class Name.
13. What is headless browser testing in Selenium?
Answer: Headless browser testing involves executing browser tests without displaying the browser UI. It allows faster execution and is useful in CI pipelines.
14. How do you validate data in automation testing?
Answer: Data validation in automation can be done by using assertions in test scripts to compare the actual output with the expected results.
15. What is cross-browser testing?
- You can’t predict which browsers your users will use while using online applications. Therefore, testing the website or web application across several popular browsers running on various operating systems is essential.
- One kind of browser automation testing is cross-browser testing, in which the tester confirms whether the online application will function properly across several browsers. Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, and others are a few of the widely used browsers.
16. What is the Page Object Model (POM) in Selenium?
Answer: POM is a design pattern where web page elements are stored as objects in a class. This approach improves test maintainability and readability.
17. Explain the difference between find_element and find_elements in Selenium.
Answer: find_element returns the first matching web element, while find_elements returns a list of all matching web elements on the page.
18. What is test data-driven testing in Python automation?
Answer: Data-driven testing involves separating the test data from the test logic. You can feed multiple data inputs into a single test case using CSV, Excel, or database connections in Python.
19. Should you automate all testing?
20. Explain the different parts of a test automation framework?
Answer: A Test Suite is a collection of test cases that are executed together. It helps organize tests and ensures comprehensive coverage.
21. What is the difference between functional and non-functional testing?
Answer: Functional testing validates the functionality of the software against specified requirements, whereas non-functional testing focuses on performance, usability, reliability, and scalability.
22. Explain the role of test cases in automation testing.
Answer: Test cases define the steps, inputs, and expected results to verify the correct behavior of the system. In automation testing, these cases are scripted to run without manual intervention.
23. What is the difference between regression testing and re-testing?
Answer: Regression testing ensures that new code changes haven’t affected existing functionality, while re-testing is done to verify that specific defects have been fixed.
24. How do you handle dynamic elements in Selenium?
Answer: You can handle dynamic elements by using more stable locators such as XPath, CSS selectors, or by implementing wait strategies like WebDriverWait to wait for elements to load.
25. What is a hybrid framework in automation testing?
Answer: A hybrid framework combines multiple testing frameworks, such as data-driven and keyword-driven frameworks, to leverage their combined strengths.
26. Is manual testing becoming outdated due to automation testing?
27. What is an assertion in Python, and how is it used in testing?
Answer: An assertion in Python is a statement used to verify that a condition is true during test execution. If the assertion fails, the test is marked as failed.
28. What are implicit and explicit waits in Selenium?
Answer:
- Implicit wait: Sets a default wait time for all elements in the script.
- Explicit wait: Waits for a specific condition to occur (e.g., element to be clickable).
29. How do you perform cross-browser testing in Selenium?
Answer: Cross-browser testing is performed by configuring your Selenium WebDriver to run tests on different browsers like Chrome, Firefox, or Edge using tools like Selenium Grid or cloud services like BrowserStack.
30. What is BDD (Behavior Driven Development) and how does it relate to testing?
Answer: BDD encourages collaboration between developers, testers, and business stakeholders by using natural language (e.g., Gherkin syntax). Frameworks like Behave in Python support BDD-based automation.
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31. How do you validate the response of a web service in Python?
Answer: Using the requests library, you can send HTTP requests and validate the status code, response time, and data using assertions like assert response.status_code == 200.
32. What is the difference between Smoke Testing and Sanity Testing?
Answer: Smoke testing checks if the basic and critical functionalities are working, whereas sanity testing is a narrow regression test that checks if specific issues have been fixed.
33. How do you use Python logging for automation testing?
Answer: Python’s logging module can be used to generate log files during test execution. You can configure log levels such as INFO, DEBUG, and ERROR to track the test flow.
34. What is XPath, and why is it important in Selenium?
Answer: XPath is a query language for navigating XML documents and HTML DOM trees. It’s important in Selenium to locate web elements when other locators like ID or Name are unavailable.
35. Why do you need cross-browser testing?
36. Explain how to set up a Selenium Grid.
Answer: Selenium Grid allows running tests on different machines and browsers in parallel. It involves setting up a Hub (central server) that distributes test cases to Nodes (different machines).
37. How do you handle pop-ups and alerts in Selenium?
Answer: Selenium provides switch_to.alert to handle alerts and pop-ups. You can accept, dismiss, or retrieve the text from the alert.
38. What is a headless browser, and why is it used?
Answer: A headless browser operates without a graphical user interface, making test execution faster. It’s useful in environments where performance is critical, like CI pipelines.
39. Explain the importance of code versioning in test automation.
Answer: Code versioning (using tools like Git) is essential for managing changes in test scripts, collaborating with team members, and maintaining an audit trail of updates and bug fixes.
40. What is the significance of test reports in automation testing?
Answer: Test reports provide insights into the success or failure of tests, including detailed logs and screenshots. They help identify bugs quickly and ensure code quality.
41. How do you maintain test scripts for evolving applications?
Answer: To maintain test scripts in dynamic applications, you should use techniques like modular scripting, page object model, and regularly updating locators.
42. What are some common challenges you’ve faced in automation testing?
Answer: Common challenges include managing dynamic content, dealing with different browser behaviors, maintaining test scripts, and handling API responses.
43. How do you prioritize test cases for automation?
Answer: Prioritize test cases that are frequently executed, critical to business functionality, stable, and those prone to human error in manual testing.
44. What is the use of decorators in Python testing?
Answer: Decorators in Python allow you to modify the behavior of functions or methods. They are used in testing for tasks like logging, timing, or retrying failed tests.
45. How would you automate a file upload scenario in Selenium?
Answer: In Selenium, you can automate file upload by using the send_keys() method to input the file path into the file upload field.
46. What are some of the alternatives to Selenium?
Cucumber:
- Writing and debugging unit, end-to-end, and integration tests is made simple using Cypress. Additionally, it allows you to record and take screenshots in order to assist replicate the bugs.
Cypress:
- Cypress is a free and open-source testing tool. It’s written in JavaScript and has become very popular recently because of its simplicity and advanced features that allow you to perform browser testing.
Robot Framework:
- A general open-source automation framework is called Robot Framework. Robotic process automation (RPA) and test automation are two applications for it.
47. How do you manage test data in automation testing?
Answer: Test data can be managed using external files like CSV, Excel, or databases, and passed into test cases to make them data-driven.
48. What is the Robot framework?
- Robot Framework is an open-source automation testing framework that is becoming more and more popular. Its main use is robotic process automation (RPA). The goal of robotic process automation is to simulate human behavior and software interactions.
- Robotic automation can press keys and buttons, go to links, retrieve data, and comprehend (to a certain extent) what is on screen, much like actual humans.Python is used to write the Robot Framework, which is independent of operating systems.
49. Explain ome risks associated with automated testing?
Negative ROI
- To begin automation testing, a team may have to invest a significant amount of money. Automated tests need costly tools and a lot of code. Learning and putting automated tests into practice takes a lot of time for developers and testers.
Playing catch-up with the technology.
- Automation testing frameworks and tools are always evolving, just like any program. The automation tools require prior programming skills and have a steep learning curve.
Maintenance Risk
- All code must be updated and maintained to reflect new requirements and address issues. This also applies to test automation code.
- Automated testing has failed if developers and testers find themselves spending most of their time on the automation framework rather than creating new features and repairing defects in the program.
50. How do you automate the testing of CAPTCHA?
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