I applied through a recruiter. The process took 5 weeks. I interviewed at Microsoft (Bellevue, WA) in Feb 2020
Interview
This interview was for AI cognitive science org at Microsoft in Sunnyvale. One recruiter reached out to me and the recruiter recommended AI cognitive science org for me based on my background. I cleared the online assessment and I was told that I will be moving to onsite interviews next. But that did not happen. First recruiter (recruiter 1) handed off the process to another recruiter (recruiter 2) who told me that hiring manager wants to do a phone screen first. The hiring manager kept procrastinating for 2-3 weeks and finally agreed to interview me. The phone screen interview with hiring manager went well and they immediately told me that they want to move to onsite rounds. They cancelled my onsite rounds 2 days before for some random reason which they did not disclose and told me that they want me to come to Bellevue and interview for there. I agreed and went to Bellevue for the onsite interviews. On the day of onsite interviews, I met my 2nd interviewer initially and my 2nd interviewer (who was gonna conduct the lunch interivew) told me that they had not booked conference rooms for 2 interviews. This was weird. I did my first interview in some temporary conference room. It went well. I had a break in between my 1st round and 2nd round. In this break, they told me that I am supposed to sit in that conference and not roam around. I sat in that conference room for 5-10 minutes and suddenly 10 people showed up with for scrum meeting. Apparently the team which I was interviewing for did not book the conference rooms at all. They kicked me out of the conference room. I had to spend my break time in the kitchen area. After my break, I told the 2nd interviewer about what happened. The 2nd interviewer was smiling and I felt that he knew about this but he was trying his best to hide it. The 2nd interview was supposed to be the lunch interview but he completely forgot about "lunch" part and took me to his workstation and started asking me whiteboard coding questions. I solved the question and gave him optimal solution. When 20 minutes were left, he suddenly remembered the "lunch" part and basically told me to finish my lunch in about 20 minutes. My last interview was a system design interview with hiring manager. The hiring manager works from Sunnyvale but they called me for onsite interviews in Bellevue. They do not have any team members in Bellevue then why invite me there. This was extremely strange. Moreover, the hiring manager joined the interview session via audio call and did not even show me his face. I solved the design question and the hiring manager said that I did a great job overall. I received an automated reject 1 day after. Funniest part of this process was recruiter 2 was hiding under the name of "conference" and basically did not even care to join the prep call. So, I never got a chance to talk to recruiter 2 in the entire process. Even the amount the expenses that they have reimbursed (which is less than the approved amount) does not match the amount that they have approved. Clearly they set me up with some fake interviewing process when they were not even interested. Such a waste of time! Rude people! On the other hand, I am glad because I do not want to be a part of such a team/org where they do not respect people.
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.