Microsoft Interview Questions

The Microsoft interview loop typically runs in the following order:

1. 1Recruiter screen
2. 2OA (some teams)
3. 3Phone screen
4. 4Onsite: 4–5 rounds (3 coding, 1 system design, 1 "as-appropriate")

These questions represent patterns seen across multiple Microsoft interview loops reported by candidates in 2024–2026.

1. 1

   Reverse a singly linked list in groups of k.

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2. 2

   Design Microsoft Teams — chat, presence, calls.

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3. 3

   Tell me about a time you embraced feedback that was hard to hear (Growth Mindset).

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4. 4

   Implement string compression: "aabcccccaaa" → "a2b1c5a3".

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5. 5

   Design Outlook calendar's scheduling assistant for finding meeting times.

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6. 6

   Find the lowest common ancestor in a BST.

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7. 7

   Tell me about a time you helped a teammate succeed.

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8. 8

   Implement an iterator for a 2D vector (e.g., [[1,2],[3],[4,5,6]]).

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9. 9

   Design a cloud storage service like OneDrive.

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10. 10

    Walk me through how you debug a production issue you can't reproduce locally.

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Behavioral rounds at Microsoft map directly to these values. Prepare one STAR story per value.