Interview with Microsoft (Office 365 Hyderabad team) at their Bengaluru office.

Hi, I am a backend developer with 8 years of hands-on experience. One of the HR personnel from Microsoft approached me to check if I was interested in an opportunity with them. I was told that there would be a total of four rounds on the same day: three technical rounds followed by a hiring manager round.

All the interviewers gave me enough time to ask questions, except for the hiring manager. They were polite and calm at all times. Overall, it was a great experience.

I attended all the rounds, and within two days, I received a standard rejection email.

Round 1:

Two interviewers were on the panel. One asked questions while the other made notes on a laptop.

They asked about my past projects. As soon as I mentioned “NoSQL/Cassandra,” one interviewer asked:

• What is NoSQL?
• Why did you choose it over RDBMS?
• What can NoSQL achieve that RDBMS cannot?
• Write code to find the maximum sum subarray in a given array.
• Given a sorted array of integers with size n, find if there exists a number that is repeated at least n/4 times. The time complexity should be less than O(n). Explain your approach and write code.

Initially, I was asked to code in any language. However, they later restricted me from using Scala and asked me to write in another language. I chose Java.

Round 2:

A senior member from the PowerPoint mobile app team interviewed me.

• Given a sorted circular linked list and a node within it, write a program to insert an integer into the linked list such that it remains sorted. Handle all edge cases.
• I forgot one other question.

Round 3:

A very senior interviewer from the Excel online team interviewed me.

• The same questions about NoSQL as in Round 1.
• Given a list of train schedules (arrival and departure times), find the minimum number of platforms required to run the trains. Write a program.
• Design a phone book. Follow-up: How do you store and retrieve data in a Trie data structure?

Lunch Break!

Round 4 (HM Round):

A very senior individual working on an instant messenger product interviewed me.

• How have your other rounds been?
• Asked about my past projects. As I mentioned “NoSQL/Cassandra,” they asked the same questions as in Round 1.
• Object-oriented design of an elevator. Write interfaces, implementations, and logic. Some questions on testing.
• Why do you want to leave your current job?
• Why Microsoft?
• He explained how they decide which team to deploy a new joiner to.