I applied through an employee referral. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at Microsoft (Redmond, WA) in Dec 2017
Interview
First, I participated in an hour-long Skype interview with a member of the team I was applying to. Then I visited Microsoft's Redmond campus for an on-site interview, which took most of the day and consisted of five interview sessions with different members of aforementioned team. Most sessions involved at least one coding question on a whiteboard; coding questions were mainly domain-specific, with a few concerning basic algorithms and data structures. In addition to coding, some of the questions posed by the interviewers were behavioral (for example, I was asked to describe how I would resolve a difference of opinion with a team member before a deadline). I was also given plenty of opportunities to ask questions of the employees.
I applied online. I interviewed at Microsoft in May 2026
Interview
1. Recruiter screen: recruiter was friendly but had their camera off. They asked me about my recent work experience, my strongest programming language, and salary expectations
2. Technical Screen: live HackerRank coding challenge with a team member of the team hiring for the role, over Microsoft Teams. The interviewer had their camera off but was easy to talk to. The coding challenge was a LeetCode-style challenge that required the backtracking algorithm. Interviewer spent extra time aftwards to take questions from me and share information about the team and employer.
3. 3x "Full Loop Interview Technical". The interviewers did not show up to these interviews. I emailed the recruiter who told me that interviewing for the role had been cancelled.
My overall impression of Microsoft based on their hiring practises is the company is dysfunctional, employees are disengaged, their hiring practises are disconnected from the actual job, and they don't care about candidate experience.
Moderate. Do leetcode tagged Microsoft questions. They generally ask from most recent Microsoft tagged questions. I applied without referral. Will have a technical screening with hiring manager. Then DSA and System design rounds.
Interview process:
Online assessment (hard level)
1-hour screening call
4 interviews in one day:
Medium-hard LeetCode (OOP-focused)
Medium-hard LeetCode DSA problem
Long system design interview (strong focus on relational database design)
Partner manager interview (AI-focused + behavioral)
The process was technically challenging and well-structured.
However, after the final interview, there was over one month of silence despite follow-up messages. Eventually, I received a generic rejection email stating:
"This decision does not reflect on your potential or the value of your experience."
I would have appreciated more timely communication and more specific feedback after such an extensive process.
