Hi, I am a backend developer with 8 years of hands-on experience. One of the HR person from Microsoft approached me to check if I am interested in an opportunity with them, I was told that there will be total four rounds on the same day, 3 rounds followed by hiring manager round.
Round 1:
2 interviewers in the panel, one was asking questions other was making notes on his laptop
Asked about my past projects, as soon as I mentioned “NoSQL/Cassandra” he asked:
- What’s NoSQL?
- Why you chose it over RDBMS?
- What can NoSQL achieve that RDBMS can not?
- Write code to find max sum subarray in a given array.
- Given a sorted array of integers with size n, find if there exists a number that is repeated at least n/4 times, n is length of array. Time complexity should be less than O(n). Explain approach and write code.
Initially I was asked to code in any language but later they kept me from writing scala code and ask me to write in other language, I wrote in Java.
Round 2:
A senior guy from PowerPoint mobile app team interviewed me.
- Given a circular LinkedList which is sorted, Given a node of this LL and an integer, WAP to insert the item in the LL so that the LL remains sorted after insertion, handle all edge cases.
- One more question that I forgot.
Round 3:
A lady (very senior) from Excel online team interviewed me.
- Same questions about NoSQL as in round 1.
- Given a list of train schedules (arrival and departure time), find the minimum number of platforms required to run the trains. Write a program.
- Design a phone book. Follow up: how do you store and retrieve data in Trie data structure?
Lunch Break!
Round 4 (HM round):
Very senior guy working on a instant messenger product.
- How have your other rounds been?
- Asked about my past projects, as I mentioned “NoSQL/Cassandra” he asked the same questions as in round 1.
- OO design of an elevator. Write interfaces and implementation and logic.
- Why you want to leave your current job?
- Why Microsoft?
- He told me about how they decide which team to deploy a new joiner in?
All the interviewers gave me enough time to ask questions, except the HM. They have been polite and calm all the time. Overall it was a great experience.
I have been to all the rounds and within two days I got a standard rejection mail.