The Microsoft Interview Experience (Application To Offer)

okay new lighting new background new setup new country um i just moved to mexico last week i've been living in mexico city for like eight days now or something um so that's why i haven't been posting much content i always have a good excuse for you guys when i don't post a lot of content i need to just stop making excuses and just do it so i've been working at microsoft for two years and i just became a software engineer too for anyone that doesn't know let me just get into it what i wanted to talk to about today was uh kind of the story i had when i applied to microsoft how i got into the company what the interview process was like just because um i think there's a lot of mystery around it right and uh just hearing the story i know i found one or two people that told me their story when i was in the application process and it just you know you feared the unknown and uh just hearing it made me feel better for some reason so anyway i'm gonna recount my story here uh also i should do a channel intro my name is jason goodison this is my channel this is every tip i wish i knew if if you get value at any point during this video please hit the like button because that actually helps the the algorithm who cares right uh and also hit the subscribe button if you want to see more content uh and if you don't well hit the youtube icon and go back to your home screen today uh so i applied to microsoft about two years ago um i believe it was 2018. um i was working in a company called toast which i've talked about multiple times on this channel before actually they ipo last week for like 20 plus billion dollars uh fun fact anyway um i was working there at the time they were much smaller and uh i was working in dublin actually and so um i had a friend that applied to microsoft and he got in and i remember thinking that i wasn't smart enough for microsoft but this friend that had applied i'd worked with him at previous jobs at a previous internship and i was like he's smart but he's not like significantly smarter than me so why don't i try my luck so i asked him like where did you apply he said careers.microsoft.com or something like that uh and so i went on it and i found the student posting they have a special posting for um people that are graduating and i apply through there um with a resume that you can see in one of my videos i have a video where i show the exact resume i used uh so check that out my channel maybe i'll put a link here if i can find it i think it might have taken them a week or two to get back to me after i applied then they said they wanted to set up a phone screen the time difference was weird because it's like an eight-hour difference but i had the phone screen now the phone screen is is interesting because um the phone screen round right it's not done by somebody technical because um i remember in particular they asked me one question they said something like tell me about a time when you solved a technical problem and like just tell me about the technical problem you know you hear a question like that and you go okay like that's a pretty broad question so what i dove into was telling them about a time where there was this bug in production and i had to solve the bug uh because it's like you know crunch time customers are are upset we're losing money i decided to tell that story but halfway through uh you know he asked me and i responded and then he said okay like what technologies did you use to solve that problem what do you mean like it was a bug and then you know kind of went on like how did you design the solution dude it was a bug oh my god i didn't realize that this was going to be like i didn't realize this question required a project and it was clear to me that the person on the other end of the phone just had a list of questions in front of them they were asking because if i start telling you about a bug and you need to hear about a project you're going to say oh like that's interesting but we're actually kind of looking for more of like a design through implementation uh thing we're not we're not looking to hear about bugs you know what i mean so i had to stop him and go like can we start this line of questioning over because my example doesn't work it doesn't fit the framework uh so anyway that that was fine we went back went through the questions um there were some interesting questions on there uh i won't give away the exact question but there was stuff like you know how would you explain concept x to like a five-year-old or something like that so you kind of had to i think what they were looking for is people that can communicate well and explain technical concepts um and so they asked about a few projects they asked about my resume and they asked that question i just gave you it's not a very technical question right so the phone screen it's you know not even face to face it was just a just a phone it was a phone screen as you can imagine fast forward about two weeks right i hadn't heard anything two weeks pass uh then they sent me an email said you passed the phone screen we are looking to set up a date for you to come in to the on-site now the on-site's going to be a little different nowadays because of cobit you're going to it's going to be set up the same way you're just not going to be on-site right but anyway i was working in ireland and they flew me out to seattle now flight was like 14 hours or something it was crazy i had to stop over in new york and then i had to um to fly to seattle and i was jet lagged as hell because it was an eight-hour time difference and then the day of the actual interview i realized i didn't have any dress socks i had to cut one of my socks up and put my foot through one of my socks just so that my socks were high enough that i didn't look stupid i was ridiculous but anyway um so i got there i basically just slept because i was so tired i slept right up until like four o'clock in the morning uh the interview starts i believe at eight a.m so i was kind of nervous i was up at four because of the jet lag i just took it easy i you know relaxed i had something to eat i um worked out a little bit then i went to the interview and so here's what happens you go to an interview there's like probably 30 to 60 people okay what they'll say to you when you show up is first they'll check you and they'll give you the badge what not then what they'll say to you is like you guys are not competing against each other uh basically there's just a bar and you need to be better than that bar right and then we'll hire you microsoft has so much churn as a company because it's so big that they're not worried they're not hiring for individual positions they know that there's eventually going to be enough people that leave that no matter how many people they hire like it's good for them they're going to need them you're not competing against those 60 people but you are going to continue to see these people throughout your entire time interviewing at microsoft you can't share the questions obviously so basically uh what will happen is you wait in the room somebody comes out calls your name you follow them into one of the uh interview rooms they're these small rooms maybe like maybe six by six feet like they're pretty small it's just enough room for one desk and then they've got a white board and uh generally the first like five minutes they're gonna just kind of chat with you get to know you and then they are gonna ask you like some questions about your resume some questions maybe about like the projects you've done um those are kind of more like behavioral questions not as technical just kind of trying to figure out like who you are what you've worked on what motivates you and then they do ask a technical question and the technical question um i feel like is most likely to be something kind of about binary trees or kind of like lists some kind of mis list or string manipulation um although i did have one question that was like a prefix tree like tries i can't believe i got asked a question like that i literally was like when he asked i was like this is dumb like nobody uses these things and now that i've worked at microsoft for two years i'm like we definitely do not use these things at least in in my job uh so anyway you do four you go back to the room or you do one you go back to the room another back to the room blah blah keep doing it then when you finish they give you like a sweater they give you um i believe they give you like a free lunch card or something so you can go buy lunch for free at the cafeteria on microsoft campus and then they also give you like a 200 basically what i wanted to say it's a 200 gift card to the microsoft store but it's not it's something really like weird like you have to you really do have to be spending money to to get the 200 off but anyway point is and i don't know if you can i don't think you can use it on software but anyway there's a microsoft store on campus and they give you some kind of promotion for it three weeks let's call it after i did that on-site uh obviously flew back to ireland continue to work there i got an email one day that just said congratulations here's a link with your offer letter and i checked the offer letter and then they set me up with a recruiter where i could ask the recruiter questions and i should have probably negotiated a little bit i didn't i was so excited i just signed it but if i were you i would negotiate with that recruiter right that's the time to do it i did this application in october or september of 2019 or 2018 and then i actually started in august of 2019 make sure to be on top of applications around september because that's when all these big companies do it and they're hiring for almost a year out so thumbs up if you liked this video subscribe if you loved it

Channel: Jason Goodison

Views: 44,314

Keywords: microsoft interview, microsoft, microsoft interview questions, microsoft interview experience, system design interview, what the microsoft interview is like, microsoft technical interview, microsoft internship, microsoft interview preparation, microsoft software engineer, how i got an interview at microsoft, microsoft software engineer interview, microsoft interview process, microsoft behavioral interview questions, microsoft interview questions and answers

Id: RiZdHKXEMdk

Length: 9min 7sec (547 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 26 2021