I applied through an employee referral. The process took 8 weeks. I interviewed at Microsoft (Redmond, WA) in Apr 2015
Interview
The interview process took 8 weeks. I was referred by a friend and was contacted by an engineering manager first. We set up a phone screening for the week after. Then two weeks went by and then I was contacted by a recruiter. She wanted to setup a phone screening but then after a few weeks she told me the hiring manager wanted to go to on-site after hearing about my phone screening. Some how I got lost in the flow of things. They flew me out the next week, very short deadline and notice, for four interviews. After my fourth interview they tacked on a fifth. The last was with the hiring manager. He told me normally when he meets recruits it is a good thing so I should not worry, however he did not want to give out an offer yet. He wanted to see where to put me. He said I was good but not what he normally hirers, i.e. not a new grad or experienced professional. I was changing from teaching in Academia for five years. After I got back on Tuesday, I was informed on Wednesday night, 3 hour time difference, that my recruiter received my feedback and wanted to schedule a time to talk the next day. We talked on Thursday where she gave me an offer for SDEII. Very exciting. I did negotiate but not on the yearly salary or bonuses as they were very competitive and above what I was expecting.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
I will abide by the NDA so I will not disclose the actual questions. I can say that I was asked some fairly tough questions. One was an actual problem they were asked to do, he should me the design requirements. The last of the four said she normally does not ask this difficult of a question but for me she would. It was tough. I will say study your basic data structures and algorithms like sorting, searching, trees, recursion, and design patterns.
1 Technical Screen, Leetcode Hard question about Graphs. Interview loop over two days, 4 rounds. 3 rounds had Leetcode Medium/Hard along with System Design questions and behavioral. Manger round was mostly behavioral along with a design question. DSA went well but the design questions were not upto the mark.
I applied online. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at Microsoft (Australind) in Apr 2024
Interview
online coding，regrex expression，computer network。some system design。focus on bug free and comnunication skill. very tough question，corner case should be considered. good interviewer they are kind and give me a lot of hint
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at Microsoft (Redmond, WA)
Interview
The process was very simple. Recruiter contacted me on LinkedIn. Finished the online coding assessment.
From there a Microsoft Hiring Event day was scheduled.
Interview was pretty simple, Straight up leetcode. didn't even change the examples.
1st interview was medium leetcode. When I solved it in 15 mins, 2nd question was asked, After that a behavioral. This interview was finished in under 40 minutes
2nd interviewer asked a very common leetcode question. He asked me if I saw that question on leetcode. when I solved that he asked me to optimize it which I did. And then a behavioral.
3rd interview was OOD after a behavioral question. The interviewer did not ask any follow up questions. This interview was finished in under 40 minutes.
4th interview was a Tree based question which was also solved in the most optimal way. Interviewer mentioned that he has very less experience in java and couldn't understand some of the code. No follow up questions. there was another behavioral question. This interview was also done in 40 minutes.
When i checked with recruiter I was told that I was rejected. I was very confident about this interview. I still don't understand why I was rejected.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Basic leetcode questions. All of them were from Explore section of Microsoft.
