Microsoft Interview Experiences

Microsoft Interview Experiences: SET 1

To describe it in one word, I would say it was fun.

I was busy in a contest the day before so didn't prepare anything for the interview. It was actually better that way - I didn't have to worry about forgetting anything and had decided to say "I don't know" for any question where I was clueless.

The first round started off well with the first few questions as what was my CGPI?how do i rate my score? and what is a good score according to me?

I told him my score(8.53) and said I rate as an ok score. A CGPI of 9 would be good according to me.

Then he asked me can you improve your CGPI? If yes how?

I smiled and said study more during the exams.

I told him that I start building apps and learn things online in the gap between exams :p

Next was programming problems, made me write gcd with recursion and later without recursion.

Then a few database-related questions....had to use my "I don't know" when he asked what is BCNF and "not sure" for an outer join query.

Then he asked about Cloud computing, mobile computing(another I don't know)

Then he read about my coding profile on codechef, asked me what was the toughest problem i had solved and if i can implement it now.

I described what i had to do in my toughest problem and told him i don't remember the exact question otherwise i could implement it.

Then he saw that i had won a college coding event(code sprint) and asked me what were the problems like.

I told him about one and he asked me to implement it and i wrote it down.

Then later he asked me to write down some out-of-the-box features if i were to make an online shopping website.(Thanks to my internship, i could use their ideas on paper :p)

That was the end, later he asked me if i had any question.I first said no but then asked one just for the sake of it.

My second interview was way shorter.

The interviewer asked me "tell me about yourself" and then he asked me to write a program to copy the content of one file to another.He got up from his seat and went out while i was still writing.I had made lots of cancellation so i decided to start over while he was gone, but for the sake of hell, my pen had to go out of ink. I saw an orphan pen lying on the desk, grabbed it, completed the code and waited for him to return.

He took his time but did come back. Then he asked me to explain the code and i did. Later he asked me how would you count all words in a file.

I didn't mention anything about my academic records in my resume(except for CGPI) so he started a rapid-fire round, asking me all my scores from SSC till date, which thankfully i was aware of.

Later he asked me of any achievements before college. I said none. Then he read about my programming contest participation and asked about it.I told him i participate regularly in codechef monthly challenges and in google code jam.

He asked me "Any achievements?"

I told him that i came in top 50 India ranking in 3-4 codechef challenge and as per their overall rating to i was in top 50.

Also that i was among international top 3000 in google code jam 2013.

He asked me "didn't you pursue it later?"

I told him i did participate in gcj 2014 but didn't get such high rank.

Then he said ok.I looked at him cluelessly for a few seconds and then he said thank you and the interview ended :)

PS : Sorry if it was too long.I am just bad at summarizing :p