An initial phone interview was scheduled with an HR recruiter.

I was asked basic technical questions, CV-based questions, and one or two common puzzles.

I had literally no idea how the recruiter was checking my answers to the technical questions. It felt so lame because the recruiter had no technical knowledge. If your answers didn't hit the right keywords present in the sheet, you were losing half the game.

It felt like the recruiter was somewhat forced to interview me and had no interest in my application. I answered almost 95% of the questions correctly if you would ask a technical person, but sadly, I was being interviewed by a robot looking for only keyword hits.

Very disappointing interview, to say the least, from a company like Microsoft. It was very unprofessional the way the interview was conducted, with no self-introduction of who I was talking to. I even had no idea I was being interviewed by a recruiter with no technical knowledge.

Basic knowledge-based technical questions, with some HR-based questions on:

• Biggest challenges
• How you solved them
• Why Microsoft