Microsoft interview experience Real time questions & tips from candidates to crack your interview

SDE - Intern

Microsoft
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3 rounds | 6 Coding problems

Interview preparation journey

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Journey
I was advised by my seniors to practice DSA from the very starting of B.Tech but I did not took that seriously. Honestly speaking, I regretted not taking their advice and in third year I started doing coding and I had to increase practice hours because I started late. But by the end of Third year, I was confident in both DSA and development but even then, I kept on revising the concepts.
Application story
Microsoft visited my campus for the placement process . We just had to upload resume and fill all details in the form. After the online test, around 97 candidates were selected for interviews out of the 800+ COE applicants .
Why selected/rejected for the role?
I was able to clear all the rounds. I think it was because I answered correctly to almost all the solutions, gave quick answers, had good projects listed on my resume and had a little knowledge about the company. I was able to impress the interviewer.
Preparation
Duration: 8 months
Topics: Data Structures and Algorithms problems with Trees, Graphs, stack etc. Basic System Designing. Database Management System and SQL queries. Operation System and Process Scheduling techniques.
Tip
Tip

Tip 1 : Make sure to solve the most recommended problems of LeetCode. Around 200 will do
Tip 2 : Be confident with your basics of chapters from Operating Systems and DBMS or SQL Queries.
Tip 3 : Have a slight knowledge of system designing concepts.

Application process
Where: Campus
Eligibility: No criteria
Resume Tip
Resume tip

Tip 1 : Make your Resume such that it is properly readable. Keep it of one page. If it exceeds try your best to include only the most important highlights.
Tip 2 : Put your most important achievements at the top and after than the not so important ones. You want the interviewer to see them first.

Interview rounds

01
Round
Easy
Online Coding Interview
Duration90 minutes
Interview date3 Feb 2021
Coding problem3

There were 3 coding questions. All of them were pretty easy and solvable in less than 30 minutes. Some string and pattern matching + some number theory problems were there.

1. Arithmetic Expression Evaluation

Moderate
30m average time
70% success
0/80
Asked in companies
AccentureSliceInfosys

You are given a string ‘expression’ consists of characters ‘+’, ‘-’, ‘*’, ‘/’, ‘(‘, ‘)’ and ‘0’ to ‘9’, that represents an Arithmetic Expression in Infix Notation. Your task is to evaluate this Arithmetic Expression.

In Infix Notation, operators are written in-between their operands.

Note :
1. We consider the ‘/’ operator as the floor division.

2. Operators ‘*’ and ‘/’ expression has higher precedence over operators‘+’ and ‘-’ 

3. String expression always starts with ‘(‘ and ends with ‘)’.

4. It is guaranteed that ‘expression’ represents’ a valid expression in Infix notation.

5. It is guaranteed that there will be no case that requires division by 0.

6. No characters other than those mentioned above are present in the string. 

7. It is guaranteed that the operands and final result will fit in a 32-bit integer.
For example :
Consider string ‘expression’ = ‘((2+3)*(5/2))’. 
Then it’s value after evaluation will be ((5)*(2)) = 10. 
Try solving now

2. Maximum Product Subarray

Moderate
25m average time
75% success
0/80
Asked in companies
American ExpressInfosysSamsung

You are given an array “arr'' of integers. Your task is to find the contiguous subarray within the array which has the largest product of its elements. You have to report this maximum product.

An array c is a subarray of array d if c can be obtained from d by deletion of several elements from the beginning and several elements from the end.

For e.g.- The non-empty subarrays of an array [1,2,3] will be- [1],[2],[3],[1,2],[2,3],[1,2,3]. 
For Example:
If arr = {-3,4,5}.
All the possible non-empty contiguous subarrays of “arr” are {-3}, {4}, {5}, {-3,4}, {4,5} and {-3,4,5}.
The product of these subarrays are -3, 4, 5, -12, 20 and -60 respectively.
The maximum product is 20. Hence, the answer is 20.
Follow Up:
Can you solve this in linear time and constant space complexity?
Try solving now

3. Angle between hour hand and minute hand

Easy
15m average time
85% success
0/40
Asked in companies
AmazonPaytm (One97 Communications Limited)Salesforce

Given the time in hours and minutes, you need to calculate the angle between the hour hand and the minute hand.

Note :
There can be two angles between the hour hand and minute hand, you need to print a minimum of two. Also, print the floor value of angle i.e. if the angle is 15.2, you need to print 15.
Try solving now
02
Round
Medium
Face to Face
Duration45 minutes
Interview date10 Mar 2021
Coding problem2

This was a technical round. First after properly introducing ourselves(me and the interviewer), we started with the main interview. I was asked 2 questions, one DS and Algorithms and the other System Design question.

1. Sibling Nodes

Moderate
20m average time
80% success
0/80
Asked in companies
AmazonMicrosoftDirecti

You have been given a Binary Tree of ‘N’ nodes, where the nodes have integer values. Your task is to print all nodes that don’t have a sibling node.

Note:
1. Node ‘U’ is said to be a sibling of node ‘V’ if and only if both ‘U’ and ‘V’ have the same parent.
2. Root 1 is a sibling node.
Try solving now

2. System Design

Design a elevator in a single building with N floors. 

Problem approach

Tip 1 : Discuss first about how the product(here, elevator) will function.
Tip 2 : Start making with the most basic classes for the elevator.
Tip 3 : One by one after making the basic class, add new functionalities to it, taking care of all corner cases.

03
Round
Easy
HR Round
Duration30 minutes
Interview date15 Apr 2021
Coding problem1

Just a discussion about my candidature and what the team has to offer me. We discussed about my interviews and my skills for the role. All of my interviews were held between 11 am to 12 am. The interviewer was very friendly and made sure I am not getting anxious.

1. Basic HR Questions

Introduce yourself.

Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

What do you know about this job?

Here's your problem of the day

Solving this problem will increase your chance to get selected in this company

Skill covered: Programming

What is the purpose of the < title > tag in HTML?

Choose another skill to practice
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