Company interview guide
Microsoft interview process and practice questions
Microsoft's careers site says interviewers look at how you think, not only what you know, and that some roles add coding exercises, portfolio reviews or presentations. Candidates commonly report a loop that mixes coding, design and behavioral questions, often ending with an 'as appropriate' interview, and Microsoft suggests answering with its STAR(R) model: situation, task, action, result and reflection.
As candidates commonly report it; it varies by team, level and year. Last reviewed 18 October 2026.
The interview process
- 1Recruiter screen
- 2Online assessment or phone screen
- 3Loop of 3–4 interviews mixing coding, design and behavioral questions
- 4Final 'as appropriate' interview with a senior leader
What interviewers listen for
- Growth mindset: learning from mistakes and feedback
- Collaboration across teams
- Customer focus
- Problem solving and clear communication
- Inclusive behaviour
- Customer obsession: using customers' perspectives to shape your work
- One Microsoft: collaborating across differences and supporting others' success
- Respect, integrity and accountability
Behavioral questions
Tell me about a time you got critical feedback. What did you change?
A good answer covers
- The feedback, stated plainly, and your honest first reaction
- What you changed and how you checked it was working
- The reflection: what it taught you about how you learn
Describe a time you learned something new quickly to deliver a project.
A good answer covers
- What you didn't know and how little time you had
- How you learned it: docs, small experiments, asking people who knew
- What you delivered, and what you'd do differently next time
Tell me about a time you worked with a team that disagreed on the approach.
A good answer covers
- The options on the table and who backed which
- How you helped the team decide: data, a prototype, agreed criteria
- The outcome, and how the team worked together afterwards
Tell me about a time you helped another team succeed, even though it wasn't your goal.
A good answer covers
- What the other team needed and why it mattered to the wider organisation
- What you gave up or took on to help
- The result for them, and what it did for the working relationship
Tell me about a mistake you made at work or in a project. What did you do next?
A good answer covers
- A real mistake, owned in the first person
- How you fixed the damage and who you told
- What you now do differently because of it
Role and technical questions
Design a parking-lot system. Where would you start?
A good answer covers
- Clarifying questions: size, vehicle types, payment, entry and exit gates
- The main objects and how they relate: levels, spots, tickets, payments
- Edge cases: a full lot, a lost ticket, many gates updating at once
How would you design a file-sync service that keeps a user's files up to date across their devices?
A good answer covers
- Splitting files into chunks and uploading only what changed
- Handling conflicts when two devices edit the same file offline
- The metadata service, storage and change notifications, and how they scale
Explain the difference between a process and a thread, and when you'd use each.
A good answer covers
- Separate memory for processes, shared memory for threads in one process
- The costs: creation, context switching, communication and safety
- An example, such as separate processes for isolation and threads for parallel work
Users say an app became slow after the latest release. How would you investigate?
A good answer covers
- Reproducing it and comparing against the previous release
- Profiling and telemetry to find where the time now goes
- Rolling back or switching the change off if users are badly hit, then fixing the cause
What happens when you type a web address into a browser and press Enter? Go as deep as you can.
A good answer covers
- DNS lookup, then a TCP connection and TLS handshake
- The HTTP request, the server's work and the response
- How the browser parses, fetches extra resources and renders the page
How would you improve online meetings for a team spread across very different time zones?
A good answer covers
- The real pain points: little overlap, missed decisions, meeting fatigue
- Ideas such as recordings with summaries, async updates or smarter scheduling, prioritised
- A success metric and a guardrail, such as privacy or meeting length
Why Microsoft? Fit and HR questions
Why Microsoft, and which of its products or teams interests you most?
A good answer covers
- A specific product or team and the customers it serves
- A link to something you've built, used or studied
- What you want to learn there
How do you keep learning outside work or study, and what are you learning right now?
A good answer covers
- A specific thing you're learning and why you chose it
- How you learn: courses, side projects, reading, mentors
- Something you've already applied from it
What would you like to know about the team or the role?
A good answer covers
- Two or three questions about the team's work, customers or challenges
- A question about how success is measured in the first months
- Questions that show you researched the team, not only the company
Tips
- Show how you learn: what you tried, what failed, what you'd do now.
- Expect a design question even in coding rounds; clarify requirements first.
- Use Microsoft's STAR(R) model for stories: situation, task, action, result, and a reflection on what you learned.
- Microsoft's own interview tips ask you to start with clarifying questions, state your assumptions and explain your approach out loud.
- Match your examples to the job description, and keep one ready about how you handled feedback.
Practise it out loud
A mock interview asks the way Microsoft's interviewers are known to, follows up on your answers and gives you a report. The warm-up is free, needs no account and checks five of these questions as you answer.
About this guide
Written by Orbit from Microsoft's own public pages and what candidates commonly report. Orbit isn't affiliated with Microsoft. The questions are practice questions in the style of its interviews, not questions taken from them. Processes change, so check the job post and what your recruiter tells you.