Microsoft Interview Experience for SDE (On-Campus)

ROUND 1: It started straight away with DSA questions. 3 questions were asked.

• Prefix to Postfix Conversion
• The Stock Span Problem 
• Find the first non-repeating character from a stream of characters

Asked me to come up with as many approaches as I could. I thought that I did the question most efficiently. while explaining I figure out that I was handling cases badly. He asked me about several corner cases and I got stuck in some of them. 
The interviewer appeared unsatisfied with both questions. I thought I messed up this round all over and not going to move further. 

TIPS: 

Solve the questions with a calm mind. Don’t stress yourself during the test because you have to do only 3 questions in 60 minutes. if you are not getting questions, ask the interviewer to explain them again, also try to explain everything to the interviewer during the interview time. Firstly start with the brute case then go for an optimized approach.

ROUND 2: CS Fundamentals, like Cashing, array Vs stack, Paging, Microprocessor, and something based on Sorting Algorithms (I am still not able to get the question), Normalization, Denormalization, Normalization forms, Join operation

Puzzle question: Impact on revenue, when the price got decreased by some % and sales, increased by some %. 

She first asked about the projects and then she gave one coding question.

• Decode a string recursively encoded as count followed by substring

I started solving with a brute approach but she told me to explain only the optimized approach and then code. I solved it.

TIPS: In the project, round try to explain all the things smartly. if you have deployed it somewhere, present it. if you have internship experience try to explain it in detail. Review your CV and be prepared to answer questions about it, as well. 

ROUND 3: Asked about my previous rounds. Then some hr questions like my vision, why I chose CSE, what I think about technology, why I want to become a software engineer, and what all projects I did in my 2nd year,3rd year, and now doing. What are the challenges I faced, and how did I overcome them? Then He asked me about my internship and what was learning over there.

The HR Round was light and was asked about my hobbies and some more questions about personal experiences. Then I asked the interviewer three personal questions from my side regarding the freshers.

TIPS:

Research the company you’re interviewing with. Take in as much information as you can about the business, read their entire website, look at all their social media platforms, and look up the latest news about them. You can’t be too thorough here.