I appeared in an interview with Microsoft BING team around 3 months back and got an offer from them. Though I didn't accept the offer, I would like to share my interview experience with the readers. Interview was simple and very well executed. First 2 rounds were conducted at Delhi and then they asked me to come to their development center at Hyderabad. One thing, I must say is that Microsoft takes great care of the interview aspirants in terms of travel arrangement and professionalism.

Since I didn't sign any agreement of not disclosing the interview questions; I am sharing the same to help people for preparing for MS:

At Delhi:

First rnd:
1) Find Mid point of singly Link List in single pass.
2) Implement strstr() function; DO it for insanely large strings as well.

2nd rnd:
1) WAP for finding first pair in an array which add up to a given sum.
2) Find if 2 lists are merging at a node and find that node as well.

At MSIDC Hyderabad:

3rd rnd:
1) Find anagrams in a 2D array of words. Discussed algo in details.
2) Test Gmail. I first took a subset of features and then covered that.

4th rnd:
1) In a char string, find min distance between 2 letters, O(n) time, O(1) space.
2) Write test cases for previous question.

5th rnd:
1) Compact spaces in an array in place:
imput: "aawskcn sdlkcnsd dskc dlnkc"
output: "aawskcn sdlkcnsd dskc dlnkc"

2) test copy command in command prompt:
> copy file1 file2
HINT: take care of what if power outage while copy is not complete or network connection drops.

3) In a matrix of characters, find an string. String can be in any way (all 8 neighbours to be considered)
like find Microsoft in below matrix.

A
C
P
R
C
X
S
O
P
C
V
O
V
N
I
W
G
F
M
N
Q
A
T
I
T

HINT: think recursion.

Epilogue:
  • Please clarify the question first with as many doubts as you ask. Don't be shy with that.
  • Take all boundary conditions in mind before presenting a solution.
  • Think aloud.
  • Discuss your algorithm with the interviewer first before writing the code.
  • Give emphasis on the efficiency.


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