I applied online. I interviewed at Microsoft (Redmond, WA) in May 2017
Interview
The interview process started with an HR person reaching out and doing a phone screening. They asked mostly personality questions but ended the interview with a puzzle.
The onsite interview lasted from 9 am to 4 pm on the Redmond campus. During that time I had meetings with 5 different people and was ask 7 different white boarding questions. My advice to anyone preparing for the interview would be to buy a coding interview prep book, for example 'Cracking the Coding Interview', and memorizing all the answers.
Interview questions [4]
Question 1
If you have a 2-d array representing islands (with 1's) and ocean (with 0's). How do you count the number of islands. Note two adjacent 1's make a single island
I applied online. I interviewed at Microsoft (Melbourne)
Interview
After submitting an online application, I received a HackerRank assessment after passing the resume screening stage, then I was rejected after completing the assessment and did not proceed to further interview rounds.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
The assessment consisted of two LeetCode-medium-level coding questions to be completed within 75 minutes.
45 mins technical interview with a member of their San fran team. Very relaxed and informal but questions were focused and lots of follow ups. Easy to schedule as was over video conferencing platform
Straightforward technical loop overall, with strong interviewers at every stage. I genuinely enjoyed the in-depth conversations around technical challenges and algorithmic problem-solving — the entire process felt well-structured and genuinely engaging.