First, I had to complete a coding evaluation test on HackerRank. I had two questions.

One was to return the number of combinations of sheep and cows given a grid representing fields with 0s or 1s. The second question was to return the number of paths to N-1, M-1 starting from 0,0 on a grid, where 1s on the grid denote passable cells.

Then I was onto the phone interview.

Here are some of the questions I was asked, as well as some feedback my interviewer gave me, in case people want to apply in the future:

• Difference between Array, Linked List, and Binary Tree.
• Difference between private, public, and protected.
• Kinds of collections you're familiar with (Arrays, Linked Lists, B-Trees, Stack, Queue, Graphs, etc.).
• They asked me my preferred language, which was C#. They asked me about CLR (Common Language Runtime), what a foreach does, as well as exception handling in C#.
• Polymorphism.
• Difference between static and virtual methods.
• Example of a conflict when you were working in a team.
• Why do you want to work for Microsoft?
• Have you applied for other jobs?
• Describe some new and emerging technologies that you've recently used.

Finally, I had a technical interview one-on-one with a Software Developer. I was asked three questions:

1. Code a string compare method. How would you test?
2. Reverse a singly linked list. How would you test?
3. Create a Queue (FIFO) class that can only use Stacks (LIFO) as its internal data structure. Implement Queue and Dequeue methods. Test it.

Create a Queue (FIFO) class that can only use Stacks (LIFO) as its internal data structure. Implement Queue and Dequeue methods. Test it.