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

Software Engineer

Microsoft
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3 rounds | 5 Coding problems

Interview preparation journey

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Journey
I kept practicing DSA and CS fundamentals from the 2nd year of Engineering. Along with it, I was also learning Deep learning and I made some good projects.
Application story
This was an on-campus opportunity. The company visited our campus, and we directly applied through their portal. Shortlisting was done on the basis of resumes and then further interview rounds were carried out.
Why selected/rejected for the role?
My basic concepts of all the topics were clear and I also prepared HR questions through mock interviews. I practiced all the basic to medium coding question before the interview.
Preparation
Duration: 4 months
Topics: DBMS, Data Structures and Algorithms, OOP, Maths puzzles, Aptitude, Deep Learning
Tip
Tip

Tip 1 : practice daily.
Tip 2 : Focus on all data structures.
Tip 3 : Build some good projects.

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

Tip 1: Add projects and Internships if you have done any.
Tip 2: Add only those things which you really know.

Interview rounds

01
Round
Medium
Online Coding Test
Duration60 mins
Interview date13 Feb 2021
Coding problem2

1. Merge Intervals

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

You are given N number of intervals, where each interval contains two integers denoting the start time and the end time for the interval.

The task is to merge all the overlapping intervals and return the list of merged intervals sorted by increasing order of their start time.

Two intervals [A,B] and [C,D] are said to be overlapping with each other if there is at least one integer that is covered by both of them.

For example:

For the given 5 intervals - [1, 4], [3, 5], [6, 8], [10, 12], [8, 9].

Since intervals [1, 4] and [3, 5] overlap with each other, we will merge them into a single interval as [1, 5].

Similarly, [6, 8] and [8, 9] overlap, merge them into [6,9].

Interval [10, 12] does not overlap with any interval.

Final List after merging overlapping intervals: [1, 5], [6, 9], [10, 12].
Problem approach

This problem can be solved with a linear scan algorithm. The list of input intervals is given, and we’ll keep merged intervals in the output list. For each interval in the input list:

Try solving now

2. Clone Graph

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

You are given a reference/address of a node in a connected undirected graph containing N nodes and M edges. You are supposed to return a clone of the given graph which is nothing but a deep copy. Each node in the graph contains an integer “data” and an array/list of its neighbours.

The structure of the graphNode class is as follows:

class graphNode 
{  
    public:
        int data;
        vector<graphNode*> neighbours;
}
Note :
1. Nodes are numbered from 1 to N.

2. Your solution will run on multiple test cases. If you are using global variables make sure to clear them.
Problem approach

We use depth-first traversal and create a copy of each node while traversing the graph. Use a hashtable to store each completed node so we won’t revisit nodes that exist in that hashtable. The hashtable key will be a node in the original graph, and its value will be the corresponding node in the cloned graph.

Try solving now
02
Round
Hard
Video Call
Duration60 mins
Interview date18 Feb 2021
Coding problem2

1. SQL/DBMS Questions

I was asked about joins, their types and data movements during join operations. (Learn)
I was asked questions about Transactions and ACID properties. (Learn)
Then he gave 2 tables and some SQL statements. I was asked to give the outputs for the SQL statements.

Problem approach

Tip 1 : Revise the basics of DBMS.
Tip 2 : Practice SQL question on Hacker rank. This helped me a lot.

2. I was asked about my project.

Write only that projects. that you have done work on.

03
Round
Easy
HR Round
Duration30 mins
Interview date23 Mar 2021
Coding problem1

1. Basic HR Questions

I was asked if I could relocate to Hyderabad. We discussed the work hours and days.We discussed the compensation.

Problem approach

Tip 1 : Be yourself.
Tip 2 : Be confident and calm in a HR interview.

Here's your problem of the day

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

Skill covered: Programming

How do you remove whitespace from the start of a string?

Choose another skill to practice
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