I applied online, and the process took five weeks.

The recruiter had a resume walkthrough, asked why Microsoft, and covered the usual topics. Then they sent a HackerRank OA with 3 to 4 questions in 90 minutes. I didn't find it too bad, to be honest. The phone screen was 45 minutes with an engineer. There was one LeetCode medium on arrays, but then he started asking OOP and database stuff.

The onsite was a super day where all rounds happened in one day, which is exhausting, not gonna lie. I had four rounds: two coding, one system design, and one behavioral with a hiring manager at the end. The coding questions were mediums involving trees and strings, and they run your code. It has to actually compile, handling edge cases and all. An interviewer spent about 15 to 20 minutes on my resume projects before even giving me the question. For system design, I got a distributed message queue. The behavioral round was very standard.

I prepared using the following methods:

• I did the Grind 75 list and the Microsoft-tagged questions on LeetCode (premium is worth it for a month).
• I rewatched some of the Striver SQL and OOPs videos because of the phone screen stories I'd read on Blind.
• For design, I watched Jordan Has No Life on YouTube.
• I also booked a mock interview with a Microsoft engineer through Prepfully since I had no clue how to talk about my projects. That session fixed my structure big time.

The topics were trees, arrays, graphs, and LeetCode mediums.