In May 2020, I was contacted on LinkedIn with some basic questions about my experience. Soon, a screening test was scheduled. If cleared, I then had to go through five interviews with the team members.

The screening test was on Codility and included three mid-level search tree and string manipulation questions.

Soon, I received an email from the recruiter stating I had cleared the screening test, and my first face-to-face interview was set up with a team member. The interviewer was very friendly and provided information on how Microsoft operates and what it means to work there. He asked me to solve a problem and discuss my solution.

After that, I was informed I had cleared that round, and within a few days, my final four interviews were set up. These comprised tech coding challenges and system design, with a number of questions on my past experience. My final interview was with the hiring manager, who asked me some behavioral questions.

I was able to provide solutions for all the questions presented to me, except for the last tech round where I took more time and could not finish my solution within the given time.

All these interviews were virtual due to COVID.

Overall, the experience was good, and the interviewers were friendly, except for one instance where the interviewer did not turn on his webcam and spoke very little. Most of the time, I felt like I was talking to a bot. It did shake my confidence a bit, but the rest of the process was very professional.

After all the interviews, I was told I would be contacted by my recruiter with feedback, which never happened. After two weeks of no news, I contacted my recruiter and then received a notification from the portal that I did not make it.

My overall experience was really nice, except for the fact that in cases of rejection, the company doesn't even bother to let the person (with whom they have spent so much time) know that they didn't make it. Maybe that's just how it works.

Search trees

String manipulation

Sorting

System design

Behavioral questions