Microsoft Interview Experience for SWE Intern- OA

Hello !!

My introduction:

I am Kavya Chitipotu from BVRIT HYDERABAD College of Engineering for Women.

I am currently in my B.Tech 3rd yr (CSE 21–25 Batch)

I have received internship offers from Microsoft and DELL

My journey:

A journey of overcoming challenges with perseverance. If you are a student who thinks Maang/Faang is beyond your grasp. Do check out this: article

Topics Covered:

* Microsoft SWE selection process, interview experience

* DELL internship selection Process, Interview experience

* Resources I followed

Microsoft SWE internship selection process:

OFF-Campus opportunity

How did I get to know about the opportunity?

The Application link was posted in our placements WhatsApp group and I also received a notification about the opportunity posted on Linkedin by Microsoft.

To stay updated about all the good opportunities available, I suggest being active on Linkedin, and if possible consider subscribing to job-posting telegram groups handled by Arsh Goyal, and Krishan Kumar.

Selection Process:

Without any referrals, I applied directly through the Microsoft Career portal. Approx after 15 days, I received the online assessment link.

The test lasted for 70 minutes, and it included 2 Medium-Hard level DSA questions. Both questions were related to the Trees concept( for a few others DP & Graph questions were asked)

I managed to solve the first question within 20–25 minutes, but the second question took me around 40–45 minutes to complete

Though I solved both of the questions, I was not expecting an interview call because it is mentioned that if two candidates have equal scores, the one with higher submission accuracy and shorter time taken to solve the questions will be preferred more.

But to my surprise, 15 days after the online assessment, I received an email asking me to select an interview slot from the provided dates.

Interview experience:

There were two rounds in total, and each round was an elimination round. I was 100% satisfied with my performance, especially in the first round.

First round (Technical round):

The interview was scheduled at 9 am. The interviewer was very friendly. He gave me his introduction and immediately jumped into the coding part.

• The first question was of medium difficulty, a DSA question based on strings. I started explaining with a brute-force solution and then tried to optimize it. I came up with 3 solutions in total (brute, better, and optimal). I was asked to code the optimal approach, and after passing all the test cases, including the edge cases, he proceeded to the next question.
• The second question was also a bitmasking and string-based question, and it was slightly more challenging for me to solve than the first one.

I successfully coded the optimal approach and all test cases passed. My performance was satisfactory, and the interviewer also seemed satisfied. He concluded by asking if I had any inquiries.

After my first round, within an hour my HR called me and said that my first-round interview response was positive and told me that my second round was scheduled at 2 pm on the same day. I was informed that my second round was a technical one (along with most others, it was the ‘Hiring Manager’ round).

The Second Round (Technical — 45 minutes) :

My second-round interviewer is a senior software engineer working at Microsoft for 18+ years. Her experience is equal to my age 🙂

She asked me to introduce myself, and then she asked me to explain any concepts related to operating systems. I chose the concept of virtual memory and explained it to her.She asked many questions that connected with my explanation. I answered every single one of them.

After I finished explaining, she told me that she liked my confidence and the way I explained it.

She presented me with a DSA question that was moderately difficult. It took me a while for me to come up with an approach.

She acknowledged that my thoughts were in the correct direction and asked to me code it. I encountered some difficulties while coding it, and she gave me a few hints to overcome them.

It was a long code, and when I ran it, it throwed an error but by then we were running out of time, i was tense but she told me that it was fine and the error showed up due to a small mistake in my code. Eventually, I realized that I had made a small typo mistake in my initial while loop.

After the interview was over, I was uncertain about whether or not I would receive a selection email. but I was hoping for the best to happen

Verdict:

Yahhhhhh !!!! I was chosen to work as a Software Engineer intern at Microsoft.

— I still remember the date. This happened on November 28, 2023. At 11:37 am, I received this email with the subject ‘Congratulations!!’. Welcome to Microsoft…

I was in college at that time, and I opened Gmail for no reason at around 11:45 am and read those lines sent by Microsoft.

Before, I was aware of the concept of ‘Happy Tears’, but I had always wondered how someone could cry when they were happy. Because I never experienced it, I felt like I couldn’t cry when I was happy. 🙂

But before I didn’t know that one day I would also experience “Happy tears” Yessss !!!! The moment I saw my selection email, I cried like a baby. I put in a lot of effort to achieve this moment. After my selection, all those late nights, and struggling days seemed worth it !!

DELL internship selection process:

This was an On-campus opportunity

The first round of shortlisting was based on CGPA, individuals interested in the internship with a CGPA above 8.5 (up to 3rd sem) were selected for the next round.

The second round consisted of an online assessment (OA) with MCQs covering concepts such as CPP, OOPS, CN, DBMS, and OS.

Further shortlisted students were allowed to sit for the physical interviews conducted at our college.

In the Technical round, the questions asked were:

— 2 easy-level coding questions

— A tricky MYSQL query

— OS and OOPS-related questions like paging, virtual memory, diff between encapsulation and data abstraction, threads, Garbage collector, etc.

Following the technical round, there was a HR round to finalize the selection of students.

Resources I followed:

These are the resources that I personally liked the content and followed, there might be many others that I didn’t explore.

YouTube channels:

TakeUforward

Abdul Bari

Tech Dose

Kunal kushwaha

Websites:

GeeksForGeeks (topic-wise sorted problems)

W3 schools

Coding platforms:

LeetCode ( very very useful)

Interview bit

Code forces (specially for contests)