I applied through a recruiter. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Microsoft (Dublino, Dublino) in Jul 2024
Interview
I was contacted by the Microsoft recruiter on LinkedIn. The process consisted of an online coding assessment(Codility) and then a virtual on-site round that consisted of three different type of interviews. Those were:
1. Coding round
2. LLD round
3. System Design round
All of the interviewers in each round started with a few technical and behavioural questions and then jumped to the main part of the interview round.
One of the things that I didn't like I about the interview process was that I was not consulted at all for my availability and convenience. I was informed that my interviews have been scheduled for this day and this time. Microsoft should think about the convenience of candidates as well.
Interview questions [6]
Question 1
Out of all the programming languages you have worked with, what criteria would you have to choose the language for your new project.
Implement a system to facilitate the auto-complete/recommendations in a cloud shell. For example, `cd /home/work/.....`. The requirements and expectations weren't very clear in this question for me. It was presented as an algorithmic problem, but expected to be solved as a design problem.
HR screening, one technical interview with the hiring manager then three interview loop which covered two system design and one dsa round.
System design was intensive and challenging.
It took them 5 weeks to come back with an offer. Background check was completed in a week, got joining date after 3 days.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Design a system for a startup company that let users post various types of content and get a unique url which can be shared with others to access the content
Started with a recruiter phone call and a 30 minute phone call with the hiring manager to negotiate a remote role since the job was based in Seattle and the manager agreed. Following up with five rounds of virtual on site. Four of them are coding/design. One of them is behavioral mostly leetcode medium level questions which I finished and I was able to do all the follow up and answer the design and time complexity questions correctly after the interview got ghosted for a whole month and got an automatic rejection email.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Leet code medium level questions. DFS, BFS, sliding windows and greedy algorithm. Follow up, asking some design questions and the time complexity of the code.
