Microsoft SDE-1 on-campus (IIT Roorkee) — resume depth and in-place constraints

Round 1

Introduction & resume deep dive

A standard self-introduction covering background and college, then 15–20 minutes on my resume and projects. The interviewer wanted specifics — the tech stack, how each project worked end to end, and what value it delivered. I made sure I could speak to every detail listed, since nothing was off-limits.

DSA question

A medium-level string manipulation problem. I first proposed a solution using a separate string to build the result; the interviewer then added a constraint — solve it in place, without extra memory. Once the logic was down they pushed on edge cases: extra spaces at the beginning, at the end and between words. I had to adjust my logic for each.

Round 2

Introduction & resume

Another introduction, then a deeper look at my resume — this time weighted toward internship experience and technical projects.

Core fundamentals

Brief coverage of OOP and DBMS, though the bulk stayed on DSA. On OOP the questions stayed close to encapsulation, polymorphism and virtual classes.

DSA question 1 — Array manipulation

A medium array rearrangement problem: move specific elements to one end while keeping the relative order of the rest. I used an in-place read-and-write pointer strategy and walked through both brute force and the optimised version with complexities.

DSA question 2 — Tree / graph

A medium tree/graph problem centred on counting a specific type of node.

Verdict

Selected.