I submitted my resume through Cisco.com for a Software Engineering internship position.

It took about a month for them to contact me back. The recruiter called me for a phone interview; the questions were pretty easy, mostly a review of my resume and background.

I was called in for an onsite interview about a week later with the hiring manager. The questions were pretty easy, likely because I was applying for an internship position. He asked me basic PHP questions, how web applications work, some networking fundamentals, and some design questions.

Then, I was interviewed individually by the entire team and the extended team. It was a pretty long, five-hour interview. The interviewers were really nice and took a lot of notes.

You should really study and prepare for the interviews, covering both technical and soft skills questions.

They offered me the internship about two weeks later.

How do you start to optimize a database engine?