I applied through university. The process took 2 days. I interviewed at Microsoft (Bengaluru) in July 2018
Interview
1st Round- Coding Round on cocubes platform.
3 questions in 90 mins. The questions were easy but the interface is very bad. It does not allow to run custom test cases. We have to just complete the functions, so cannot use the datatypes we want. (In C++, character array was given and not string). Also, it shows only for basic test cases. It might be possible that the code fails for boundary conditions.
2nd Round- Pen Paper coding test (Group Fly)
2 questions in 60 mins. All the students were divided into groups of 6-7. We had to write the code considering all the possible cases and boundary conditions. 2-3 from each group were selected.
3rd Round - 1st Interview
2 questions were asked. After a little discussion about the efficient solution, I was asked to write code for both the questions.
4th Round- 2nd Interview
Again 2 questions were asked and had to write code for the same. Also, few os questions were also asked.
5th Round- 3rd Interview
Some Questions based on C, C++ and OS were asked. He also asked about my project ( not much technical details but why you did this and what problems you faced while doing it).
Interview questions [5]
Question 1
1st Round
Q1 Given a char array. Find the average of ASCII values of the characters.
Q2 Given a number, find next smallest palindrome.
Q3 Find Lowest Number by Removing n digits from a given number.
2nd Round
Q1 Given arrival and departure times of all trains that reach a railway station, find the minimum number of platforms required for the railway station so that no train waits.
Q2 Write a function to connect all the adjacent nodes at the same level in a binary tree.
3rd Round
Q1 Given a list of tickets, find itinerary in order using the given list.
Q2 Write optimized code for findmax(n) = max( n, findmax(n/2) + findmax(n/3) + findmax(n/4) ) . (Top-down DP).
4th round
Q1 Given a large string and a small string, find if any permutation of the small string is present as substring in the large string.
Q2 Given a matrix, with 0s and 1s. 1 represents obstacles. Count the total number of paths possible to reach to bottom right block from top left block if possible moves are right and down.
Q3 Difference with thread and process. In which situation should we use thread. What is thread pooling?
5th Round
Q1 Code for the reader-writer problem in C++.
Q2 Where are variables created by malloc and array stored.
Q3 Given many processes, some are CPU bound and some are IO bound. How to have fairness in round robin , as CPU bound will get more slots. (Ans using multi-level feedback queue).
Some questions on virtual paging.
Last question, Where do you see yourself after 5 years and why do you want to join Microsoft.
Straightforward technical loop overall, with strong interviewers at every stage. I genuinely enjoyed the in-depth conversations around technical challenges and algorithmic problem-solving — the entire process felt well-structured and genuinely engaging.
I applied through an employee referral. I interviewed at Microsoft (Bangalore Rural) in June 2026
Interview
The interview was hard, even as a fresher the dsa they asked was hard category after I checked on leetcode. Though I couldn't solve it. Some of the other people who interviewed were asked easy - medium dsa
The interview was a long process. There was first the recruiter screen, which was followed by a 4-loop interview structure that covered technical, behavioral, and system design. The interviewers were very kind and accommodating.
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