The communication started at a career fair. When I gave my resume to one of their representatives (a current engineer at Microsoft), he quickly asked a few questions to get to know about my background. Later, he told me he would forward it to a recruiter who would contact me if there was a suitable match. I had to raise my eyebrow here because the guy had my resume and asked me several questions. This alone should be enough to proceed with an interview or not. Reading other posts, it seems Microsoft conducts onsite campus interviews, so why forward to a recruiter? Perhaps, due to the lower reputation of my university, they do not want to spend too much time interviewing people onsite.

A couple of weeks later, I received an email to schedule a phone interview. At last, something is better than nothing, as I would have about half an hour to prove my capacity. I have gone through interview posts here on Glassdoor and could not find any details on phone interviews. Most were either college interviews or people talking about their onsite interviews after passing the phone interview. In any case, I prepared myself with the questions posted, and later realized those were overkill for the phone interview.

Now, I have gone through plenty of phone interviews with multiple tech giants. In most cases, I have made it to later rounds in phone interviews, but not onsite. Well, I just want to say I have become quite comfortable with these initial interviews, both technically and behaviorally.

The interviewer called on time, and we started by discussing my background. This was already done when I submitted my resume, so I see no point in reiterating all this. Although I was asked similar questions in my past interviews, on those occasions, I did not forward my resume personally, and the initial phone calls were the first time I spoke to someone inside the company.

Next, I was asked several semi-technical and behavioral questions. Most of these questions have already been discussed elsewhere, therefore I will not emphasize them much. However, I will mention some of them below, because I think it's on these questions that I may have underperformed. As for other questions, I am sure "Design a Table," "Test an Elevator," and "Determining Apple, Orange, and Apple-Orange from incorrectly labeled boxes" should ring a bell, or you will certainly encounter them if you search on the internet.

A few days later, I received the usual no-offer email. The only positive thing I can take is they told me to reapply in six months. From what I know, they usually give a one-year clause, therefore this was a good rejection, I hope.

I did give some ridiculous answers which could be a good reason for rejection. I will discuss them in the Question sections below. Perhaps you guys could judge if this is certainly worth getting a rejection.

How many lines of code have you written in your favorite project?

What is your favorite Microsoft product? What feature would you add to it?