Round 2 (Technical) :-

This was the hardest interview round. Interviewer literally asked me everything under the sun.
Interviewer first asked me to introduce myself, as she went through my resume. She inquired about my competitive programming profile, and my hobbies. I was asked few OS questions on multi – threading and it’s real – life implementations. Afterwards, I was provided with a design problem,

• “Imagine you are a project manager of Microsoft, design a messenger service app like WhatsApp”. You have to explain all the points and features diagrammatically, such that even a non – technical person can understand.

She then noted down four sectors from my resume, namely, data structure and algorithm, programming language (C++), DBMS and Client – side scripting, and then asked me to rate myself in all four.
Firstly, she started basic questioning like, “what is a tree”, and progressed to BFS & DFS, their algorithm, uses and where one is preferred over another. This lead to thorough discussion on Dikstra’s shortest – path algorithm. Underlying reasons was to check your in-depth knowledge.
After DSA, discussion moved to C++, pointers, their uses and difference between struct, class and their pointer handling. Discussion went around OOPS concepts like polymorphism, function overloading and overriding.
She then proceeded with networking questions. This discussion went on like a recursive DFS, as everything we discussed, lead to some other topic. Few topics and questions I remember were, “What is a IP”, “Why a machine needs a IP”, “What is a static and dynamic IP, and when one is preferred over another”, “Firewalls”, “Encryption Methods / Cryptography”,  “about HTTP and HTTPS protocol” and thorough questions on “Client – side & Server – side scripting”. Discussion also veered to off-topic questions like, we have to design a robot / system which recognises emotions by voice, how & what parameters will you use to do the same ?

Finally, we finished discussion on networking, and she asked me two simple DBMS SQL queries, one being “print the second largest number in the table”.

This interview went around for more than one and half hours. Interviewer was very helpful and friendly, and gave hints whenever I was stuck.

Note : –  Do not panic if you are stuck, or not able to answer. Be honest to what to do or do not know. If the question is factual, you can admit you don’t know, rather than blabbering non – sense. However, for thinking / brainstorming questions, it is better to be persistent and go on trying.

I applied to Microsoft through referral program for full – time position of software development engineer. All of the candidates who applied through referral were invited for an online coding test on co-cubes platform after 2-3 weeks.