Microsoft Interview Questions for SDET/SDE jobs divided In following eight areas ?
[1]. General Areas Questions
[2]. PAST EXPERIENCE AREAS Questions
[3]. Algorithms Questions
[4]. Coding Questions
[5]. TECHNICAL AREAS Questions
[6]. TEST AREAS Questions
[7]. THOUGHT PROCESS Questions
[8]. PROFESSIONAL’S DEFINITION
Microsoft SDET
We are working on many interesting changes to our services and building a next generation of test infrastructure to take quality assurance of our offering to a new level. You will work on defining test strategy for your owned areas, write automation and run tests. In addition, you will work on the product code base to improve its test-ability, diagnostic-ability, debug-ability and overall product health for the storage system. You will get hands-on experience with Performance, Scalability and Service Diagnostic of a distributed system.
Microsoft SDE
Our software engineering profession is a collection of disciplines responsible for designing, developing, and delivering our products. Work here and you’re on top of the world of technology, collaborating with brilliant people on projects with the potential for a lasting legacy. Developers (Software Development Engineers – SDEs) write the code—C, C++, C#, and other programming languages—that turns concepts into new technologies and services. We are experts in feature design and feasibility, and we collaborate with program managers and test engineers to define features and ensure quality.
2. Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: This presentation doesn’t provide detailed knowledge or concepts of any technical items. It’s
assumes that a candidate will refer to appropriate text books based perception. Moreover, this presentation explains the thought
process, reasoning with job Interviews and provides several types of examples, which helps a candidate prepare for Job
Interviews, especially in regards to technical companies.
The author makes no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this work and
specifically disclaims all warranties, including without limitation warranties of fitness for a particular purpose. The fact that an organization
or web site is referred to in this work as a citation and/or a potential source of further information does not mean that the author endorses
the information the organization or web site may provide or the recommendations it may make. Furthermore, readers should be aware that
Internet web sites listed in this work may have changed or disappeared between when this work was written and when it is read.
Sumit Arora | sumit@thecareertools.com
3. REMEMBER:THE
PARAMETERS
TECHNICAL
INTERVIEW
DEPENDS
ON
VARIOUS
- From
employer
side:
job
title, responsibility, department, pr
oject type, technology type, skills
type, years of experience, mind set
of
interviewer/interviewers, immediat
e requirements, firm decision for
hire-nohire and many more.
- From candidate side : the way CV (resume) was presented, the
way the candidate carried the technical/non-technical
discussion, Job Title, Past Experience, thought process, technical
thoughts presentation/participation and many more )
5. MICROSOFT
Majorly
HIRE/INTERVIEW-1
SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT ENGINEER
Our software engineering profession is a collection of disciplines responsible for
designing, developing, and delivering our products. Work here and you’re on top of the world
of technology, collaborating with brilliant people on projects with the potential for a lasting
legacy. Developers (Software Development Engineers – SDEs) write the code—C, C++, C#, and
other programming languages—that turns concepts into new technologies and services. We
are experts in feature design and feasibility, and we collaborate with program managers and
test engineers to define features and ensure quality.
www.thecareertools.com
6. MICROSOFT
Majorly
HIRE/INTERVIEW-2
SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT ENGINEER IN TEST
We are working on many interesting changes to our services and building a next
generation of test infrastructure to take quality assurance of our offering to a new level.
You will work on defining test strategy for your owned areas, write automation and run
tests. In addition, you will work on the product code base to improve its testability, diagnostic-ability, debug-ability and overall product health for the storage system.
You will get hands-on experience with Performance, Scalability and Service Diagnostic of a
distributed system.
www.thecareertools.com
7. MICROSOFT
Majorly
HIRE/INTERVIEW-3
PROGRAM MANAGERS
Our software engineering profession is a collection of disciplines responsible for
designing, developing, and delivering our products. Program Managers (PMs) transform
visions into elegant designs that ultimately turn into products and solutions. We anticipate
what customers want and translate that into what they get. Working closely with
development, test, user experience, and marketing professionals, we identify
requirements, set priorities, manage feature sets across product lifecycles, and author
technical specifications and customer scenarios.
www.thecareertools.com
8. MICROSOFT Interview
Questions Divided In
Following EIGHT Areas ?
Asked by multiple interviewers
in multiple rounds [ HR
Interview, ProgrammingTest, Phone Interview-1,Phone
Interview-2,Face-To-Face
Interviews(~3-4), Hiring
Manager Interview[~1-2]/ ~4560 Mins]
www.thecareertools.com
1
2
…
8
8
9. 1
General
Areas Qs
-Please tell me about yourself?,
-What is your most efficient technical skills ?,
-Which technical area you are trying to improve?,
-What type of job or role you looking for ? ,
-How do you feel that such job fits to you ? ,
-Why did you opt for this job ? ,
-Why you are looking for a job ?,
-Why Should Microsoft Hire You? and much more...
RELEVANT TO THE PRESENTED CV/RESUME
9
www.thecareertools.com
10. 2
PAST
EXPERIENCE
AREAS Qs
-Best Practices – Effective While At Work
-Career Aspirations: Expectations From Work,
-Career Movement: Past Work Experience,
-Coding: Largest Code Project,
-Programming: Largest Piece Of Code,
-Technical Skills: Encountered Technically Complex Problems,
-Work Interest: Learning From Work and much more...
RELEVANT TO THE PRESENTED CV/RESUME
www.thecareertools.com
10
11. 3
Algorithms Qs
-Sorting Approaches
-Searching Approaches
-Brute-Force Approach
-Greedy Approaches
-Task Scheduling Algorithm
-Huffman Codes
-Longest Common Subsequence
-Naïve String Matching
-Rabin-Karp Algorithm
-NP-Completeness Algorithms
-Red-Black Trees
-B-Trees,
-Graph Traversals
-Hash Tables and much more...
STANDARD CONCEPTS BUT TRICKY WAYS
www.thecareertools.com
11
12. 4
Coding Qs
-Compress String
-Partition The Array Of Balls
-Adding Two N-Bit Binary Integers
-Trie Data Structure To Store Words
-Algorithm To Do Wild Card String Matching
-Convert A BST Into A Linked List
-N-Ary Tree
-Graph’s Breadth First Traversal
-Shuffling A Deck Of Cards
and much more...
STANDARD CONCEPTS BUT TRICKY WAYS
12
www.thecareertools.com
13. 5
TECHNICAL
AREAS Qs
•
•
•
•
•
•
- Text Search Domain [ OR]
- Security Infrastructure Domain [
OR]
- Ranking and Relevance Domain [
EXAMPLE: OFFERED
OR]
SKILLS/TECHNICAL- Storage Domain [ OR]
DOMAIN BY A
- Natural Language Processing
PROFESSIONAL
Domain [ OR]
-SOMETHING ELSE
In-depth understanding of the TCP/IP, Windows Internals stack
Proficient in C ,C#,C++,.NET Technical Qs ARE RELEVANT TO THE PRESENTED CV/RESUME
Solid understanding of the Windows operating system
A passion for developing scalable and optimized software systems
High aptitude and technology-agnostic approach to engineering.
Experience with network devices (routers, switches, load balancers) and a good
understanding of network routing protocols
www.thecareertools.com
13
14. 6
TEST
AREAS Qs
-How to test a soda machine,
-Practical Test approaches,
-Test strategies,
-Test Tools,
-Note That Is Constructed Using Words,
-Kinds Of Testing Have You Done
-Forming the test cases for a given problem
-Overall thought process towards testing ?
-How do you understand the testable item to test ?
-How to define the test coverage ?
-Does it feasible to do the performance testing or load
testing or stress testing or xyz testing
STANDARD CONCEPTS BUT TRICKY WAYS
and much more...
RELEVANT TO THE PRESENTED CV/RESUME
This is for “Software Development Engineer in Test” positions, Its additional to General
Areas,Past Experience Areas, Skills Areas, Thought Process, Technical Areas,
www.thecareertools.com
14
15. 7
THOUGHT
PROCESS Qs
-How would you design a new browser?
-How will you design a new operating system?
-How would you design a railway track?
-How would you lead a team in Disneyland for entertainment activities ?
-If you are a trip organizer for a small group of people ?
-What software's a soccer player must use ?
STANDARD CONCEPTS BUT THOUGHTFUL ANSWERS
15
www.thecareertools.com
16. 8
PROFESSIONAL’S
DEFINITION
-What Is Your Skill Table? ,
-On Which Type Of Industry Centric Solutions Are You Involved Or Would Like To Be
Involved? ,
-Which Job Title Closely Defines The Type Of Professional You Are Ur Expect To Be?
and much more...
RELEVANT TO THE PRESENTED CV/RESUME
16
www.thecareertools.com
17. What should be a
professional’s
approach to deal
with such interviews?
17
www.thecareertools.com
18. IN SUMMARY
[step-1]: Prepare a package of the skill items related to general
areas, past experience areas, skills areas, thought process and
other parameters.
[step-2]: Frame your package to a closely matching job title.
[step-3]: Present your package(CV, e-mail, way of talking and many
more) based on the type of company, job title and execute the job
interview.
18
www.thecareertools.com
20. You need to follow a very organized
and disciplined approach to prepare
for the Software Engineering Job at
Microsoft.
www.thecareertools.com
20
21. HERE IS THE PLAN WHICH WE FOUND
TO BE REASONABLE
21
www.thecareertools.com
22. Actually Microsoft
follow an approach
on which they
measure the
thought process of
a candidate.
22
www.thecareertools.com
23. Microsoft uses Algorithms/Data
Structures/Open-ended questions as one of
the approach to evaluate the talent.(As
those are one of the base to develop
technologies)
[If you have applied for a software engineering job.]
23
www.thecareertools.com
24. (Step-1) You should have
practical understanding of the
Algorithms (e.g. When to use
BackTracking, When to Use
Divide and Conquer, Why
Double Hashing
required?, Where Brute Force
concept can be applied?)
(100 Hours).
YOU MUST-HAVE/NEED-TO SPENT 100 HOURS OR MORE/AT-SOME-POINT-OF-TIME TO
THOUGHTFULLY UNDERSTAND SUCH CONEPTS(e.g. 4 hours for 25 days or 8 hours 12 days)
24
www.thecareertools.com
25. (Step-2): You should have
practical understanding of Data
Structures e.g. (Practical use
cases related to :when to use
circular buffer , or when to use
adjacently list or the
combination of both or
something else
to solve the problem ).
(100 Hours)
YOU MUST-HAVE/NEED-TO SPENT 100 HOURS OR MORE/AT-SOME-POINT-OF-TIME TO
THOUGHTFULLY UNDERSTAND SUCH CONEPTS(e.g. 4 hours for 25 days or 8 hours 12 days)
www.thecareertools.com
25
26. (Step-3) : You must practice
several coding problems to
implement the things which
learn from Step-1 , and Step-2
(choose any coding language for
the choice of yours (C, C++ or
Java or Python or PHP or any
one else )).
(100 Hours)
YOU MUST-HAVE/NEED-TO SPENT 100 HOURS OR MORE/AT-SOME-POINT-OF-TIME TO
THOUGHTFULLY UNDERSTAND SUCH CONEPTS(e.g. 4 hours for 25 days or 8 hours 12 days)
www.thecareertools.com
26
27. (Step-4): Solving the problem
doesn't mean just to solve
it, but to understand the best
way to solve it .(How you
connect the given solution with
the computing/memory
resources e.g.
Memory/Processing Power)
(100 Hours)
YOU MUST-HAVE/NEED-TO SPENT 100 HOURS OR MORE/AT-SOME-POINT-OF-TIME TO
THOUGHTFULLY UNDERSTAND SUCH CONEPTS(e.g. 4 hours for 25 days or 8 hours 12 days)
27
www.thecareertools.com
28. MOST IMPORTANT ONE.
The main concept for the interview is to keep
the interview active and this requires some
action from your side.
28
www.thecareertools.com
33. MOST IMPORTANT ONE.
You need to understand
clearly the questions
given to you.
33
www.thecareertools.com
34. MOST IMPORTANT ONE.
You need to understand
the interviewer’s expression
and mindset to
understand those
questions.
34
www.thecareertools.com
35. MOST IMPORTANT ONE.
You might need to ask
appropriate questions
to understand the
question or any other
discussion item.
www.thecareertools.com
35
36. AND ALSO
Prepare : "Please tell me about your self"
, "Your skills related positive/negative further
interest" , Basics for the most needed
computer science concepts or anything as you
presented on your "CV/Resume".
(100 Hours)
YOU MUST-HAVE/NEED-TO SPENT 100 HOURS OR MORE/AT-SOME-POINT-OF-TIME TO
THOUGHTFULLY UNDERSTAND SUCH CONEPTS(e.g. 4 hours for 25 days or 8 hours 12 days)
36
www.thecareertools.com
37. ABOVE IS JUST A
SAMPLE PLAN, YOU
MAY CUSTOMIZE THE
WAY YOU WANT(E.G.
100 HOURS TO 10
HOURS OR
SOMETHING ELSE)
37
www.thecareertools.com
38. CLICK TO AMAZON, TO FIND THE
BEST BOOKS YOU MIGHT NEED.
38
www.thecareertools.com