Initial Recruiter Screening:

I was contacted by a university recruiter about a week after applying through the Microsoft careers portal. The call lasted about 30 minutes and focused on my resume, interest in Microsoft, preferred teams/locations, and general availability. The recruiter was friendly and clearly explained the next steps.

Technical Phone Interview:

The next stage was a 60-minute technical phone interview with a Microsoft engineer via Microsoft Teams. I was asked one medium-to-hard LeetCode-style coding question and one follow-up that built on my solution. I was expected to talk through my thought process, optimize my code, and handle edge cases. The interviewer provided hints when I got stuck, which made it feel collaborative.

Onsite (Virtual) Interviews – Final Round:

I was invited to a virtual onsite interview that included four back-to-back interviews (45 minutes each) with short breaks in between.

• Two technical rounds focused on data structures, algorithms, and system design basics (for entry-level).
• One behavioral round followed the STAR method, with questions like "Tell me about a time you dealt with a difficult team member" and "How do you prioritize tasks under pressure?"
• One team match round, where a hiring manager discussed ongoing projects and assessed how my interests aligned with the team's work.

Phone Screen / Initial Technical Interview

These typically test coding and algorithmic thinking.

Coding & Algorithms:

• "Given a string, return the first non-repeating character."
• "How would you detect a cycle in a linked list?"
• "Write a function to merge two sorted arrays."
• "Describe the time and space complexity of your solution."

Conceptual Questions:

• "What is the difference between a stack and a queue?"
• "Explain hash maps and their average/worst-case complexity."