Microsoft Interview Experience for SDE (On-Campus)

Microsoft visited our campus to select students for the roles of SDE Intern as well as FTE (based on the performance of the internship) in November 2021. I did my internship at Microsoft in 2022 and based on my internship performance, I got a pre-placement offer for full time and I will be joining for a full-time role at Microsoft in 2023. Here is my interview experience.

They conducted a coding round followed by 4 interviews. Each round was an elimination round.

CODING ROUND

• It was conducted online on the Codility platform and consisted of 2 coding questions (Duration: 90 minutes).
• Questions were quite easy and the time allotted was enough to attempt the questions.
• You need to keep in mind the base case and corner cases while solving the questions.

Questions:

• The first question was from dynamic programming. It was like:  Given an array ‘arr’, where arr[i] = the number of hours required to produce the ith car. Two assembly lines, A and B, with their respective working hours per month are available for the production of the cars. Do you need to write a function that calculates the maximum number of different cars that can be produced in the upcoming month? 
  • For instance, when arr = [1, 1, 3], A = 1, and B = 1, the output should be 2.
• I didn’t remember the exact question, but it was something related to bitwise manipulation and involved determining subsets.

INTERVIEW ROUND

Round-1 ( Technical ): At first, the interviewer asked me to introduce myself and then he gave me coding questions and he told me the write the code in whichever programming language I am comfortable with.

Questions:

•  A minimum number of jumps to reach the end of the array.

I tried to keep the interview interactive by telling the interviewer my approach as I wrote the code. He was quite satisfied with my solution as I was able to implement it with the optimal solution.

• Design and implement a system where you start a new bank, and customers are limited to open only one type of account, which could either be a Savings account that is not allowed to have a non-zero balance or a Current account that is allowed to have a zero balance. Customers are allowed to perform only deposit or withdrawal transactions on their respective accounts
• He asked me to explain only the logic and approach to this problem. I was not able to give a satisfactory answer. However, he provided some helpful hints that enabled me to arrive at the correct solution eventually.

Some tips on how to approach a coding problem:

• Understand the problem very well, and ask the interviewer if you have any doubts. Also, get clear with the inputs and outputs of the problem.
• Start approaching the problem. Try to share your approach and thoughts with the interviewer. If the interviewer agrees with your approach, start implementing it in the code editor. 
• Try to implement the code with less time and space complexity.
• Write the code in a proper format so that the code looks clean and can be easy to understand and follow.
• After you are done with the code, try to come up with the test cases and do a dry run.

This round went around for nearly 45 minutes and the interviewer was quite helpful and friendly. After 10-15 mins I got a call for Round-2.

Round- 2 ( Technical + Managerial)

• The interviewer asked me about my projects, which I had mentioned in my resume. 
• The interviewer gave me a scenario-based question and he asked me how I was going to approach it.
• Some behavioral and managerial questions were asked.

Suggestion: Try to practice behavioral and managerial questions as much as you can to enhance your thinking abilities and facilitate greater ease during interviews.

This round went around for nearly 40 minutes.

Round- 3 ( Technical + HR )

• The interviewer asked me about the most challenging projects that I had done so far and my biggest accomplishments if I had any.
• Had detailed discussions on various aspects that I had mentioned in my resume including projects, certifications, extracurricular activities, achievements, etc.
• Previous internship experience and the details of the work assigned to me in the previous internships.
• Many managerial and behavioral questions were asked related to teamwork like:
  • If a team member opposes your idea while discussing a project, then how will you handle this situation?
  • How will you manage your work if you have too much workload pressure?
  • If you are appointed as a team leader, then what will be your roles and responsibilities?

This round went around nearly 50 minutes and I felt like this was the best round as I enjoyed it and I was very much comfortable with the interviewer.

Some suggestions while appearing/preparing for an interview:

• At the end of every interview, the interviewer asked me if I had any questions for them. Never say “no” as an answer to this question as it gives a negative impression on them and shows that you have no interest in knowing anything about the company.
• Try to be confident while saying the answers to the interviewer, don’t let them know that you have a doubt about your answer.
• Stay calm before and during the interview.
• Keep your interview interactive.
• Prepare scripts for introducing yourself to the interviewer and for answering behavioral and managerial questions that are generally asked during an interview. 
• Do thorough research about the company before your interview.
• Be clear with the fundamentals and basics. The interviewer always judges a candidate based on how much he/she is clear with the concepts.
• Always go through your resume properly before appearing for the interview.

At the end of 2 months of internship at Microsoft during the summer of 2022, I had another interview round which was AA (As Appropriate) round.

AA Round: This was basically a cultural fit round. An interviewer basically asks behavioral questions in this round.

• The interviewer asked me about my overall internship experience at Microsoft.
• Some questions related to my resume were asked.
• Some questions related to the work that I did during my internship were asked:
  • How did you approach the work given to you?
  • What was the most challenging part of your work?
  • What feedback had your managers and mentors given you about your work?

This round went around for nearly 35 minutes.

Thanks a lot, Geeks For Geeks. Every minute of my last few weeks of interviews was just into Geeks For Geeks. Amazing platform.