How To Prepare for the Microsoft Coding Interview?

I recently shared an article on how to prepare for a coding interview, but sometimes you want to prepare for a coding interview for a specific company that has standards on what they expect from their employees. One of these companies is Microsoft. So if you are showing up for a coding interview at Microsoft, this article is for you, as in this article I will walk you through how to prepare for the Microsoft coding interview.

Microsoft Coding Interview: Process

Microsoft is always looking for smart people, like all companies. But this company is looking for a candidate who is passionate about technology. During the coding interview at Microsoft, you probably won’t be tested on the ins and outs of APIs, but you will have to write code on the board.

During the coding interview at Microsoft, you will first have a brief interview with a recruiter who will ask you a few questions to prepare yourself. Typically, your first interviewer will not ask you about coding and technical questions, but if you are asked about coding and technical questions, they will only serve to prepare you for your next rounds so that you are less nervous in the next round.

You will have the coding interview at Microsoft at the office itself, unlike many companies where you are interviewed in a conference room. But if the Covid-19 continues till your interview, you can have a virtual interview where you give an interview on a video call, but the entire process remains the same. On the day of your interview, you will have 4 to 5 interviews. Make sure to be nice with all your interviewers as they can fight for you to be hired or not.

After all the rounds of interview, they could make the decision the same day or it could take a week as well. But if recruiters aren’t very responsive in updating your selection status, don’t think they’re silently rejecting you, it’s because they’re busy. So this was the complete process of the coding interview at Microsoft. In the section below, I will take you through how to prepare for the Microsoft Coding interview.

How To Prepare For The Microsoft Coding Interview?

You need to prepare yourself for all the important topics of Data Structures and Algorithms. Make sure that you solve questions on a piece of paper or a whiteboard also. If it is going to be a virtual coding interview then you may be asked to code on a notepad so be prepared for it. After preparing it you need to go through the fundamentals of the job for which you are aiming at Microsoft.

For example, If I am aiming to become a Data Scientist at Microsoft then I will go through some of the books that cover the fundamentals of Data Science and then I will go through all the latest technologies and applications that are being used by the Data Scientists of the big tech companies.

Now, one of the tricky questions you are asked during the coding interview at Microsoft is “Why do you want to work at Microsoft”? In this question, the interviewer wants to see whether you are passionate about technology or not. If I got this question at the coding interview at Microsoft then my answer would be:

“I have been using the products of Microsoft since I was in school. I have seen that all the products developed by Microsoft are unique and used by everyone. For example, when I was a kid I used to play games on my PC which was running on Microsoft Windows XP, when I grew up I started using Microsoft Powerpoint for giving presentations at my school. When I came into the university, the Visual Studio Code became my primary code editor that I still use for creating machine learning applications. This is what inspires me to work at Microsoft, you create products that are a basic need to the people at every level.”

Summary

So this is how you can prepare yourself for the coding interview at Microsoft. You can practice some of the most important coding interview questions from here. I hope you liked this article on how to prepare for the Microsoft Coding interview. Feel free to ask your valuable questions in the comments section below.