I applied through an employee referral. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Microsoft in Sep 2024
Interview
I was referred and had a recruiter reach out about a week later. I scheduled a call with the hiring manager and asked in advance what this call would consist of. I was told that it would just be a resume review.
When I got on the call, I was asked how well I knew some of the optional requirements and then asked a leetcode hard with only about 15 minutes left. However, it was one I had seen before so I was able to give correct answer. After that I spoke with the HM for well over the time limit about the job and their personal experiences working for MS.
I was almost certain I was going to be moving forward since I really enjoyed the chat I had with the HM and was able to solve the question even though I was asked it by surprise.
The only thing I can think of is that I didn't know some of the optional requirements that well. In that case then I think they should have been required instead of optional, to not waste anyone's time.
I was also ghosted until I followed up multiple times .
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
NDA, but was a leetcode hard on the Microsoft list.
HR screening, one technical interview with the hiring manager then three interview loop which covered two system design and one dsa round.
System design was intensive and challenging.
It took them 5 weeks to come back with an offer. Background check was completed in a week, got joining date after 3 days.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Design a system for a startup company that let users post various types of content and get a unique url which can be shared with others to access the content
Started with a recruiter phone call and a 30 minute phone call with the hiring manager to negotiate a remote role since the job was based in Seattle and the manager agreed. Following up with five rounds of virtual on site. Four of them are coding/design. One of them is behavioral mostly leetcode medium level questions which I finished and I was able to do all the follow up and answer the design and time complexity questions correctly after the interview got ghosted for a whole month and got an automatic rejection email.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Leet code medium level questions. DFS, BFS, sliding windows and greedy algorithm. Follow up, asking some design questions and the time complexity of the code.
