My Microsoft interview experience and Pr ...

My Microsoft interview experience and Preparation Guide

May 10, 2021

Hi There,

I hope your family and friends are safe and doing well during these hard times. Please take care of your loved ones and be in contact with them to provide any kind of support they might need. Stay safe!

In this post, I'll be talking about my interview experience at Microsoft and how I prepared for my interview. So let's jump right into it. 

My Background

I have 4+ years of experience in the Software Industry and Start-up world. I started my career with Royal Bank of Canada as an iOS Engineer. I then transitioned into the start-up world as a Co-founder and CTO at Simplified Automation Inc. I led the Software Engineering team there and primarily worked on technologies such as Angular, .NET Core, DevOps, iOS, Azure Cloud, ELK stack, Firebase among a few others. I'm currently working at Microsoft as Software Engineer 2.

Job Application

I saw the job posting on LinkedIn from where I applied directly on Microsoft Careers Website. I had to fill the form at their Careers page which requires you to fill educational details, work experience details and some other details. Please make sure you fill out this form correctly as it is a very important step in the process.

I applied for the position of Software Engineer 2 with a job location of Vancouver, BC, Canada.

Online Coding round

After a few days of application, I got an email from with a link to an online test on Codility platform. This test had approximately 2 hours time limit. It included 2 questions with one question based on iOS and another based on DS/Algorithms. Make sure you pass all the test cases and only submit when all test cases pass. Based on your position you might also have a set of multiple choice questions in this test or might not have an online test round. 

A few days later, I received an email stating that I have cleared the first round and would be further having a virtual on-site round. I received an email with the date for my virtual on-site round and interviews structure. Please note that I did not have a choice to select the date because apparently this position was a part of some hiring event (which I did not know at time of applying).

Virtual on-site Experience

On a virtual on-site day, 4 interviews were lined up back-to-back, 1 hour each with 10 mins break in between. All the rounds were virtually conducted over MS Teams.

  • Round 1 - System Design: This interview was focused on System design. I was given an application to design and was expected to build classes and methods to support the application. We discussed various details like scale of application and users while I was working on design.

  • Round 2 - Hiring Manager: In this round I met with the Hiring Manager who focused on my Soft Skills and asked me about various situation based questions. I also faced questions like, "Tell me about a time when...".

  • Round 3 - Technical 1: This round was focused on technical skills including iOS, coding, DS and Algo. I was given a problem to identify if a string is Palindrome or not, but the interviewer added some extra tricks to it to make the question more difficult. The interviewer also asked me domain specific questions in iOS.

  • Round 4 - Technical 2: This round was completely focused on DS and Algo. Interviewer asked me 2 questions. First question, find two numbers whose sum is zero in a binary tree. This question was relatively easy and included concepts like tree traversal. Second question was to reverse a linked list 'x' number of nodes at a time. 

What to expect after the Interview

I received the first response almost 3 weeks after my interview (primarily because of the holiday season in US/Canada). I was offered a position in a different team than the one I interviewed for. I met with the new Hiring manager and discussed the team and requirements of the position. At this time, it was also an opportunity for me to ask more questions. Make sure you don't discuss compensation with the Hiring Manager, as it is done separately by the recruiter. 

Next day, I met with the recruiter to discuss my compensation. I negotiated with them with another offer I had in hand. This process was really slow and it took them almost a week to come up with a revised offer. After I agreed on the revised offer, it took another 3 weeks to just receive the offer in my email. Apparently it had to do something with approvals. So you need to be really patient at this time. Once I received and sent back the signed offer back, it took 3 weeks to finish the background verification and another week to work on the joining date. All inclusive, it took me about 3 months after the interviews to start my employment at Microsoft. 

Interview Preparation Tips

I did my preparation using multiple sources. The idea is to practice coding as much as possible. Here are few resources I used:

Mentorship Series

If you'd like to meet me for a virtual coffee for mentorship or if you have any questions, please book a time with me. I will try my best to answer your questions. I can help you with following topics:

  • Preparing for a technical Interview

  • Learning Technology Stacks: Swift, iOS, Angular, .NET Core, Azure Cloud, DevOps, Mobile Applications, Firebase, Ionic, Git

  • How to build a software product from scratch: things to consider, pick your technology stack, deploy to the internet!

  • Product Management

  • Applying to Universities in Canada/US

If you think I have helped you in reaching your professional goals, please consider buying me a coffee.

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2 Commentaires
Someone
May 11, 2021
Thanks Ishmeet for your article. It will be very helpful .Hoping to buy a coffee for you in coming months🙂
1
Ishmeet Sethi
May 11, 2021
Thanks so much! Feel free to give your feedback on what topic would you like to be covered in future.