I applied online. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Microsoft in Sept 2013
Interview
There were totally 2 rounds of Phone Interview.
1st round: "Given a linked list such that one node point to some random node, Write the clone method of a linked list."
I was able to give an approximate solution in C# using Dictionary, the interviewer was helpful and encouraging inorder for me to come to exact solution.
Couple of days later, got a call back from recruiter that I will be interviewed for 2 round of phone interview.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
2nd round:
"What is the data structure which suits best for the Battleship game? The board will be of size n x n, with m different ships each having k1, ..., km lengths. Each ship can either by place horizontally or vertically on the board.
The structures should be designed such that they can support basic operations for playing a game. For example, the board and a particular (i, j) coordinate representing a position on the board may be passed into a function attack(). The function should return hit if a ship was hit at that position, sunk if a ship has sunk after being attacked at that position, and miss if no ship is at that position.
Describe your design of the structures, what kind of data they store, and the runtime complexity of typical operations for playing the game (like the attack() function) as a result of your design decisions"
I was coming with an O(n) solution during attack, which was my first attempt and then I was thinking about optimization. But by then the time was over and interviewer seemed unhappy with my solution or the attempt.
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.