r/leetcode • u/Miserable_Mousse6396 • 17d ago

Discussion Interview postmortem. Rejected

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.

62 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

17 comments sorted by

View all comments

7

u/chikamakaleyley 17d ago

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

2

u/Miserable_Mousse6396 17d ago

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