Status: Final year student (2022)
Position: SWE at Microsoft
Location: India
Date: Nov-Dec 2021

I applied directly for Microsoft Engage Program 2021 for full-time SWE roles at Microsoft on their career page and received a test link for a coding contest on the Codility platform by the end of October.

Online Coding Contest ( 90mins on Codility)-

There were two questions of medium-hard difficulty -

1. Similar to this problem- Maximum number of points that can lie inside the circle
2. Modified Knapsack with two bags having different capacities

I was able to solve both, and after a week, I was selected for Microsoft Engage Mentorship Program.
Out of approx 50,000 candidates, the top 400 were selected for this program based on their test performance and resume.

Engage Mentorship Program -

In this program, each candidate was assigned a mentor and was asked to build a functional prototype ( any web app, android app or ML-based apps, etc.) within three weeks on the selected problem statement. (This time, the problem was to build something which can simplify tasks of students and teachers). Some sessions were conducted regarding Git, hosting, and 2-3 meetings with the mentor were held for any technical support.

Project evaluation -

By the end of the 3rd week of November, we were asked to submit our git repo and video demo of our application. Based on specific criteria, projects were ranked, and the top few candidates were shortlisted for interviews. I got a mail after 10-12 days that I was selected for the interviews.

Interviews-

All the interviews were virtually scheduled on the same date and were eliminatory in nature.

Technical Round 1 (40 mins- Virtual)

This round was scheduled at 10 am and was of 1hr duration. After a brief introduction, the interviewer asked me about my previous experiences and projects and gave me a DSA problem of linked list.

The problem was to print all nodes values that appear more than once in a linked list,
Eg - if the list is 1->2->3->1, then 1 should be printed.

I was asked to code this from scratch on any IDE. I presented a hashmap-based approach after which, the interviewer was satisfied and then asked about different types of Data structures and the difference between stack and queue. After that, he moved to Operating System and asked about the Round Robin scheduling algorithm and the type of data structure used there. I told him about the queue-based approach, after which he was pretty satisfied.

Technical Round 2 (40 mins- Virtual)

After 20 mins, I got a call that I was selected for the next round, which was scheduled from 11.30 am. Again after a brief intro, the interviewer asked me about previous projects and gave the Backspace String Compare Problem (https://leetcode.com/problems/backspace-string-compare/). I presented a stack-based approach and tested it on some corner cases. The interviewer was happy and asked me to ask any doubts, after which I asked a couple of things and left the meeting.

Managerial Round (1 hr - Virtual)

After round 2, I got a call around 3.30 pm that my last round was scheduled from 4 pm. This time the interviewer was a project manager and asked me about previous experiences and some general questions listed below -

1. pros and cons of working from home,
2. about my college life,
3. challenges I faced during mentorship program and,
4. about my current college project.

I tried to answer everything with honesty and in the STAR fashion. The interviewer was very convinced and satisfied with my responses. I again asked a few doubts before leaving the meeting.

Result

After the last round, I received a mail that the final results would be declared within 2-3 days. I was pleased with my performance, and finally, after two long days, I got the offer and was extremely happy to accept that.