I'm a vendor at MS and I've been seeking fulltime role at summer, internally/externally.

Interviewed at G in July and MS in August. Unfortunately, was not able to clear it out and want to share my experience and thoughts

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[Dublin/London] Google - SWE III

** Screening

- I reached out to the recruiter via LinkedIn.

- Phone Screen: No Tech Discussion, she just asked about my current role and previous experiences.

** Virtual Onsite (3 Problem Solving, 1 Behavioral)

- Round 1: Typical Behavioral Interview (Weirdly it was by a SWE III not by a Manager) - "Strongly Hire"

- Round 2: Similar to "Top K Elements" (LC 347) but with different form - "Hire" (Interviewer had comments on indentation and readability)

- Round 3: Crossword Puzzle (LC 2018), was not able to come up with optimal solution and not all edge cases were covered - "No Hire" (It led to my rejection)

- Round 4: Priority Queue question (LC 347) - "Strongly Hire"

Result: Got Rejected because of the failed round 3, recruiter was very supportive for giving me the full feedback. She told me I can apply next year and vast majority of candidates failed the first attempt.

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[Prague Czechia] Microsoft - SE II L61

** Screening

- Reached out to recruiter internally via teams.

- Phone Screen: Recruiter asked about my experience and no tech discussion was involved

- Tech Screening with an Engineering Manager: It was a behavioral interview focused on my past projects and tech complexities I dealt with before.

** Virtual Onsite

- [Problem Solving] Round 1: Interviewer asked me to implement MinHeap data structure from scratch including HeapifyUp/Down, Dequeue, Enqueue, Peek.

- [OOP LLD] Round 2: What's OOP and SOLID Principles? Design a Chess Board

- [System Design HLD] Round 3: Explain Resiliency? Horizontal VS Vertical Scaling? Design a System that creates marketing campaign and sends emails to clients

- [Behavioral] Round 4: Typical Manager interview.

Result: Failed due to the first round, as I wasn't able to fully implement the heap and interviewer had to give me a lot of hints. Did very well in the other three rounds

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Takeaways:

* One big screw up in one of the rounds is enough to get you rejected. No body cares about the months of preparations and efforts you put.

* Passing the screening and securing a big tech interview is harder than the interview itself.

* Months of preparation and mock interviews could go for nothing due to a single round or some bad interviewer.

* DSA interviews are unpredictable and might need luck sometimes. Just one hard LC problem is enough to invalidate your hard word and competency. No matter how good you are!