The first round of phone screening primarily focused on my background. I believe the interviewer was from HR/Recruiting and was not highly technical. It's crucial to sell yourself during this round. I highlighted a project I worked on in parallel computing, which I believe helped me secure an on-site interview. I was also asked a common puzzle: three baskets containing oranges, apples, and mixed fruits, with their labels jumbled. The challenge is to identify the correct basket for each by picking just one fruit from any basket.

Advice: Impress your interviewer by effectively marketing your skills and backing them up with your past work.

I was flown to Seattle and stayed at a Redmond hotel the night before my on-site interview. On the interview day, a Microsoft cab picked me up from the airport and took me to their Recruiting building. Many other candidates were present, but they were mostly for internships.

You will meet with your designated recruiter, who will be your point of contact after the interview. As mentioned in other reviews, engage positively with this recruiter and emphasize your skills, and more importantly, your passion for Microsoft. This recruiter has a significant influence on the final decision.

I had five on-site interviews with five senior engineers/managers. Their experience at Microsoft progressively increased, ranging from 10 to 25 years. Each interview lasted one hour. During this time, the interviewer would discuss their role and experience for 10-15 minutes, inquire about your experience for another 10-15 minutes, and the remaining time was dedicated to a coding question.

These interviews were not exceptionally difficult. My perception, and what I'd heard, is that at Microsoft, success hinges more on:

1. Demonstrating genuine passion and excitement about joining Microsoft.
2. Writing clean, quality code with comments, a main driver function, consideration for corner cases, verbalizing your thought process as you code, and testing your solution.
3. Presenting yourself professionally.

You have the right background if you've reached the on-site stage. Focus on that background while consistently showcasing your excitement and desire to join Microsoft. Have a solid answer for "Why Microsoft?" Ask insightful questions that demonstrate your critical thinking ability. Before starting to code on a whiteboard, ask clarifying questions about the problem, discuss your design approach, and point out any limitations. Begin coding with proper comments, spacing, and use good variable and function names.

You can expect to hear back from the recruiter within 1-3 days. Microsoft offers a generous compensation package, including bonuses, RSUs, and benefits. However, if you have a competing offer, don't hesitate to negotiate; you will likely secure a higher package.

URL Shortener: Write a method that returns a 7-character string for every request. The string should be unique on every request.

Reverse a Sentence: How are you -> you are How

Make a copy of a binary tree and describe a solution to transfer this tree from Machine A to Machine B and unpack it at Machine B. (Open-ended; no single correct answer.)

Given a binary tree with a next pointer, connect every node's next pointer to its immediate neighbor of the same level (if there is one) or the leftmost node of the next level. Using this, a binary tree can be traversed like a linked list. (Hint: BFS)

Efficient way of finding if two strings are anagrams.