Here’s my most recent interview experience (and result):

🎲 The process:
1️⃣ Applied through referral.
2️⃣ Recruiter reached out to me after a few weeks.
3️⃣ 4 coding rounds.
4️⃣ 3rd round had a small System Design problem at the end.

🎢 The interview breakdown:

1️⃣ Coding round 1:
A backtracking problem involving an Array.
Medium difficulty.
It was over within 30 minutes because the interviewer had only 1 question for me.
- This round went well.

2️⃣ Coding round 2:
This round had 2 questions:
First Question: A binary tree problem involving recursion and backtracking. 
Medium difficulty but could feel hard if you haven’t done similar problem before.
Second question: A matrix based graph problem.
- I was able to answer the first problem but ran out of time for the second problem.

3️⃣ Coding round 3:
A sorting-based counting problem. 
The problem was phrased as a real world scenario and the trick was to convert it into a known algorithm.
Medium difficulty.
- Optimized time complexity from O(nlogn) to O(n) using extra space.

At the end, I was asked a small System Design problem related to batch processing which I answered after few hints.
- This was my best round.

4️⃣ Coding round 4:
This round was with a hiring manager and it started with discussing about the team I was interviewing for.
I was asked one coding problem based on matrix traversal.
Medium difficulty. It had edge cases.
Writing and visualizing on pen and paper helped.
Behavioral questions at the end.
- This round went well.

🎯 Result:
Few days after the interview, I was informed that my interview feedback is positive and I was offered the role.
This was in 2021 and that time I had an offer from Adobe as well. 

It was a difficult decision to make but I decided to join Adobe because of the team and the tech stack.

Overall, I enjoyed the interview process and found the questions interesting to solve.

📚 Few tips for a successful Microsoft interview:
- At Microsoft, the interview process might differ slightly from one team to other. 
- In general, you can expect 3-4 coding rounds and 1 system design round for senior roles. I didn't have a separate System Design round.
- Most of the problems I encountered were of medium difficulty.
- Communicate your thought process clearly during the interview.
- Prepare behavioral questions and be ready to answer questions related to your past experience and technologies you have worked with.

CREDIT : Ashish Pratap Singh (LINKEDIN)