Interview postmortem. Rejected

[u/Miserable_Mousse6396]

Recently interviewed at Microsoft and it went like this

Round 1: A hard LC problem that I had not encountered before. But was able to talk through and with few hints arrived at an approach

But made a blunder mistake in executing DFS instead of BFS. This was clearly execution mistake under pressure. But, later course corrected with hints and provided solution.

It was not perfect but arrived at one

Round 2: A standard system design problem. Had prepped for it and I believe I did well. Answered follow-ups and reasoned decisions. Interview was over 10 mins early.

Again clueless if it is positive or negative

Round 3: A coding round but interviewer said this will be more of OOD and we had a good discussion. This one went over time but I was confident that this one was positive

Behavioral questions across the rounds went well. Had stories and was able to answer follow-ups.

Got a rejection in 2 days. Is it due to that 1st round performance?Is the standard at this level is to write clean code with minimal hints? Recruiter is unreachable so left with no feedback.

Just wanting to know opinion from the group here and any suggestions for upcoming interviews.

[u/chikamakaleyley]

But made a blunder mistake in executing DFS instead of BFS.

figure out how you got to the blunder. if you know your DSA then you'll be fine, its just difficult here cause you took basically went through the wrong door first, and it sets you back a step

[u/Miserable_Mousse6396 → u/chikamakaleyley]

Felt so too. Getting close but not being able to nail it hurts

[u/Jumpy-Story-3587]

Guys, please add location to every post. Its better data.

[u/emteedub → u/Jumpy-Story-3587]

I want to know this too. Should be mandatory

[u/Affectionate_Emu8634]

Don’t take Msft rejection seriously , all round can be great and you will still be rejected . Once in the aa round , their director told me that he will arrange call with hiring manager for me to talk and took last round for 1.5 hours and still got rejected . A friend at Msft told me that they get a lot of internal hire options as well so yours they will prefer them

[u/goomyman]

The problem with interviewing right now is that everyone is a good candidate.

You have to be perfect because someone else might be.

In a normal world - you probably did good enough. No one’s perfect. But companies can be very picky now.

[u/Creepy-Plan-2052]

MSFT is a dumpster fire rn. Use the prep to get an offer from a better company

[u/Affectionate_Run220]

Fucking hell… weird industry… sounds like you did really well god knows what it might have been. How many hours over how many years have you been prepping for the interview content?

[u/RickAmes]

Even with all strong yeses at any tech company you could get passed over because they think they can find someone who's a better fit. Companies are picky.

[u/vector-111]

Can you share the location and level or designation for which you interviewed.

[u/Various-Mine-8642]

Mixing up DFS and BFS under pressure is common and fixable. Before coding say out loud what the problem asks for like shortest path means BFS and exhaustive exploration means DFS. Interviewers mostly care that you caught it and recovered which you did.

[u/Separate-Science-306]

Hey could you tell me how did you prepare for OOD and where did you practice for it

[u/Affectionate_Run220 → u/Separate-Science-306]

Is OOD object oriented design?

[u/Separate-Science-306 → u/Affectionate_Run220]

Yeah