Microsoft Software Engineer Interview Guide

The first round of the Microsoft Software Engineer interview is the Recruiter Phone Screen interview. It is a 30-minute call with a recruiter and will include a discussion about you, your experiences, and your role at the company.

There may be an online coding assessment, that will be conducted on a platform such as Hackerrank. It will have three-four questions and you will get 90 minutes to complete them. Topics that will be tested are - 

• String manipulation
• Arrays
• Trees
• Recursion
• Data Structures

1. Tell me about yourself.
2. Why are you applying for this position?
3. Why this role?
4. Talk about a project you are proud of.
5. What value would you add to Microsoft?
6. Why Microsoft?

This is the second interview in the Microsoft Software Engineer interview process. It will be a 45-minute interview with a software engineer(s). You will be asked some technical questions and will be asked to present a code for one question. 

Questions will be based on the following topics - 

• Data Structures 
• Object-Oriented Programming concepts
• DBMS
• Programming language-based knowledge
• Project experiences

The above-mentioned topics may change depending on the role and the team to which you have applied. Hence, you should prepare well for domain-based questions.

• Talk to the interviewer when you are solving the question so that the interviewer knows your thought process. Many interviewers give small hints and provide greater clarity to the question in case of any confusion

1. What are storage classes in C++?
2. When do we use the ‘volatile’ keyword in C++?
3. What is an SQL trigger?
4. What is the difference between a procedure and a function in DBMS?

For coding questions, you can refer to the technical questions mentioned under Round 3.

Note - SQL queries based on a given order table can also be asked. 

You can also refer to the article 7 Tips on How to Approach and Solve Coding Problems Successfully

The final round of the Microsoft Software Engineering process is the Onsite round, commonly known as the Super Day. It consists of 3-5 technical interviews and 1 HR round, conducted by professionals of various teams of the company. Each interview will be 45 minutes long.

1. Technical Interviews

In the technical interviews, you will be tested on concepts such as - 

• Computer Science basics
• Operating Systems
• Machine Learning
• Objected Oriented Programming
• Data Structures 
• Networks
• Questions based on Java

Technical questions related to your experiences may also be asked. Many recruiters give about 15-20 minutes of the interview to discuss the projects on your resume and then continue with the technical part.

2. HR Round - 

The last round in the recruitment process is the HR round. It helps the interviewer understand whether you are a good fit for the job or not by judging your strengths, weaknesses, communication skills, and capability of handling the role.

• We recommend that you answer questions using the STARR Framework - Situation, Task, Action, Result, Reflection. It will help you explain the situations in a clear and precise manner. Remember to focus most on the result.

Microsoft Technical Interview Questions -

1. Given an array, find its equilibrium index.
2. Write a code for the Minesweeper game.
3. How would you explain recursion to someone having a non-tech background?
4. What procedure do you follow while debugging your code?
5. What is the difference between good code and great code? 
6. How can recursion be used to search in a tree?
7. Use DFS to search for the given number in the graph.
8. Write a code that finds whether a number is a power of 2.
9. Write a program that determines if a string is a palindrome.
10. Write a code to explain how a ternary search tree works. 
11. Given an integer, write a function that represents its hexadecimal form.
12. How will you implement a stack using a queue?
13. Given a string, check whether it is a Pangram or not. (A pangram is a sentence that contains every letter in the English alphabet).
14. How can we deserialize a binary tree?
15. Given an integer array, find the contiguous subarray having the largest sum.
16. Write a code to determine whether a Sudoku board is valid or not. 
17. Write an algorithm to determine if a given number n is happy.
18. How would you write a code that implements Tic Tac Toe?
19. Given an array, find the subset with the maximum product.
20. Given a matrix with only 1’s and 0’s, find the largest square containing only 0s and find its area.

Behavioral Interview Questions - 

1. What is a piece of recent news you have heard about Microsoft and what is your opinion on it?
2. What project do you feel was your biggest success?
3. Is there any project that you regret working on?
4. How will you handle a crisis?
5. How would you describe your optimal work environment?