Microsoft Internship Process

Stage 1:

CPI cut-off: 7 CPI and above

Branches allowed: CSE, IT, ECE, EE

Job profile: Software Engineering Intern

Job location: Hyderabad/ Bangalore

Stipend: INR 80000/month

Provision of PPO: Yes

Stage 2:

It was an online test of 90 minutes having 3 questions hosted on a site owned by Microsoft called Mettl. The questions asked were of varying difficulties and everyone had shuffled questions from a question bank. So some students might get all easy questions and others all hard ones. But this does not matter a lot since they normalize the marks (according to Mohit since he solved only 1 and a half but got selected for next round). Focus on time complexity of your solution. You can try brute or naïve approach if constraints are less. Also the platform (Mettl) was somewhat unusual . Be sure to try it beforehand (you are given some time before test to get familiar with the platform).

Around 90 students were shortlisted out of 270+ students for the next stage.

Stage 3:

This round is called Fly round. This is basically a subjective pen-paper round. We were given 2 questions and we had write complete code for that in the paper. 

Mohit Dogra

Questions asked were very simple. One of them as I remember was, Find the minimum number of platforms required given the arrival and departure time of trains. You can read solution on GeeksForGeeks. Be sure to write neat and clean code with comments as required.

Nikhil Sethi

The 2 questions asked from me in the subjective round are :-

1. Write a function to connect all the adjacent nodes at same level in a binary tree.https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/connect-nodes-at-same-level/

2. It was based on array implementation.

Around 25 students were shortlisted for the final stage of interviews. 

Stage - 4

Interview Experience 1 :-

This was on the same day just after the fly round, so no time for any further preps. It consisted of 3 rounds, with all being technical ones.

Basic questions were asked in each round to test your thinking ability. Discussion on projects mentioned was also there. Most questions asked from me were on strings( I can’t remember much of those) . One question of DP was also asked, Given the stock prices on different days, give the sequence of buying and selling stocks (Stocks buying/selling problem on GFG). Start your approach from brute force and show him that you are building your way up to the solution yourself. Have confidence. Some questions about OOPS concept were also asked in the last round. I was asked to design a ATM machine class and describe its operation. So prepare for that also. Some students also had 4 interviews(God knows why).

Mohit Dogra

ECE Batch of 2021

Interview Experience 2 :-

It consists of three rounds of interview(2 Technical and 1 Technical + HR).

Round 1 : The round started with my introduction to the interviewer. Then he asked me about all the data structures i know. He then started with a simple question to write a code for the queue implementation of linked lists.The next question was Given a singly linked list and an integer k,reverses the nodes of the list k at a time and return the modified linked list. I was supposed to write a complete code for this too. He then looked at my resume and asked some basic questions related to my project and my technical achievements.

Round 2 : This time interview started with direct coding questions. First question was related to tree data structure and i need to write the code in paper. Next question was related to backtracking. Then another question of finding a median of running stream of numbers. And last question was related to graph.

Round 3 : This round was combination of technical and HR. So it started with the usual questions of introducing myself, then why would i want to join their company. Next she asked me about some basic OOPs concepts and then to design a class diagram of ATM machine. She then asked 5-6 basic questions related to programming, data structures and algorithms.

Nikhil Sethi

CSE Batch of 2021

Results :

Finally 9 students were selected including Mohit and Nikhil for the Internship at Microsoft.

Suggestions :

-> Keep talking with the interviewer during the whole process, don’t be into yourself. For every line of code written by you on paper explain why you are doing that.
-> Make a clear understanding of the questions asked by the interviewer, don’t just rush into finding the solution and giving the wrong response every time.First make the question clear and then design your solution accordingly.
-> Always try to make your interview interactive and try to come up with the solution cummulatively. Whatever approach you have in your mind discuss with your interviewer and take his/her help if you get stuck somewhere.