Microsoft wanted to hire the interns from our college for two month internship program. It was 3rd year of my engineering. I sent out the resume via college's placement office and I was short listed for further process. So initially I went through an aptitude test that consisted of few MCQ's based on the basic programming skills (C, C++) and there were two easy programming questions.
1. To find the Nth node from the end of linked list (C,C++)
Bwaah..I can't recall second programming question :( . So, I managed to solve both the programming questions and was little sure that I will get short listed for next round. We didn't get the reply from company for a long time and after around 3 months reply came. Around 22 students were short listed for next round of telephonic interview.
I was first among the short listed candidates to have telephonic interview rounds. I was a bit nervous, and practiced on what to speak on general questions like Tell me something about yourself, and questions to be asked to interviewers. So I got call on my mobile number exact at 6 pm as it was planned. The interview lasted for around 30 minutes. My interview was among shortest of all telephonic interviews :P , for others it lasted for an hour. So, In interview general questions like tell me about yourself were asked. Then the interviewer asked about everything I had mentioned in my resume ,so it is better to prepare on resume beforehand and be thorough with it. Interviewer asked me about the languages I knew, Some of the lab projects I had done in college and asked few questions on how I did them. Then she asked me a question to know how well I can think..So, the question was something like this
There is a village. The villagers in village go to a nearby city every day for work by bus. But bus sometimes come early or late and some villagers miss the bus because of this problem. So, what can you do to solve this problem??
I explained on my view and what can be done. Interviewer sounded quite ok with my answer. Then asked if I have any questions for her. All this lasted for around 30 minutes. Some of my friends were asked programming questions in telephonic interview. One guy was asked on how he will explain your grandfather about features of phone..
Aft
er a week the results of telephonic interview came via a mail. I was Short listed for next round of F2F interview at MSIDC, hyderabad :D ...... Around 12 students from my college were short listed. Some days before interview there was a conference call to ask some of the general queries. So,we went to hyderabad for interview by train. Microsoft had a reimbursement policy (2000 Rs for transport and 4000 Rs for accomodation for a day ,per person). So we booked one posh hotel and went to hyderabad on a day earlier. The day of interview arrived.
It was a big campus with around 4 buildings. I was really excited as it was my first interview :D .
So there was a person who came to greet us .. They call it the lunch interviewer. He was a cool guy. As we were called at around 12 pm, he took us to have lunch. The lunch was complimentary :P, the food was ok ok (It wasn't the case when I later went for a Google interview :) ). So Finally After lunch the interview process started...
My first interviewer was very friendly. He made my first interview experience very awesome. The interview was very chilled and stress free. He gave me hints while solving the problem and helped me arrive at the solution. The questions asked to me were like this.
- Reverse a linked list and test it
- There is an array of size [1 - N] containing numbers from 1 to N-1 , where one number is duplicate. Find the duplicate number. Complexity should be O(n). e.g consider array of size 5. then elements in the array are 3,2,1,4,1. Output should be duplicate no is 1
At the end interviewer told me on what I can do to improve my skills and gave feedbacks.
Then, there was a second interview. This guy was little serious in looks. He asked me a single question.
There is a bit stream 110010110…….∞. There is a function getbit() which returns the current bit. Then determine whether the number produced till the current bit from left is divisible by 3 or not . The problem was supposed to be solved with the help of remainder obtained from the previous number.
Both the interviews lasted for about 45 minutes. Unfortunately I wasn't selected for next and last round of interview :'( but I was very happy with the overall experience :) .. Four of my friends were selected for internship program. (Three of them later got PPO) I was very happy for them. Later on the same day we went back to our place by Train. We had loads of fun in train. It was a real awesome experience to cherish for lifetime. We friends still recall those memories on our Whatsapp group 'Microsoft By Railway' which is still there... :) :) :)
