I applied through a recruiter. The process took 6 weeks. I interviewed at Microsoft (Prague)
Interview
Very smooth interview process, probably the best one I've had. It took roughly 45 days from sending my CV to receiving the final result, which is not very fast, but it's still reasonable considering I had to fly abroad. There is a phone interview and up to four on-site interviews on one day. All of these were very professional and enjoyable. The difficulty was average, perhaps easier than I expected. You are expected to write code on a whiteboard to solve technical questions, but you can choose any sensible language to do so. Be prepared to answer questions about your past experience and some behavioural questions. You are not expected to be able to solve everything perfectly, but you have to demonstrate the right attitude and show that you know how to approach the presented types of problems. I received the result of the interviews right after the last on-site interview.
I applied online. I interviewed at Microsoft in May 2026
Interview
1. Recruiter screen: recruiter was friendly but had their camera off. They asked me about my recent work experience, my strongest programming language, and salary expectations
2. Technical Screen: live HackerRank coding challenge with a team member of the team hiring for the role, over Microsoft Teams. The interviewer had their camera off but was easy to talk to. The coding challenge was a LeetCode-style challenge that required the backtracking algorithm. Interviewer spent extra time aftwards to take questions from me and share information about the team and employer.
3. 3x "Full Loop Interview Technical". The interviewers did not show up to these interviews. I emailed the recruiter who told me that interviewing for the role had been cancelled.
My overall impression of Microsoft based on their hiring practises is the company is dysfunctional, employees are disengaged, their hiring practises are disconnected from the actual job, and they don't care about candidate experience.
Moderate. Do leetcode tagged Microsoft questions. They generally ask from most recent Microsoft tagged questions. I applied without referral. Will have a technical screening with hiring manager. Then DSA and System design rounds.
Interview process:
Online assessment (hard level)
1-hour screening call
4 interviews in one day:
Medium-hard LeetCode (OOP-focused)
Medium-hard LeetCode DSA problem
Long system design interview (strong focus on relational database design)
Partner manager interview (AI-focused + behavioral)
The process was technically challenging and well-structured.
However, after the final interview, there was over one month of silence despite follow-up messages. Eventually, I received a generic rejection email stating:
"This decision does not reflect on your potential or the value of your experience."
I would have appreciated more timely communication and more specific feedback after such an extensive process.
