How Microsoft Interviews in 2026: Process, Questions & What They Score
The complete process, reported questions, and what interviewers score.
Microsoft / Interview snapshot
7
stages from
application to offer
30
reported questions
2-6
weeks, typically
19
public sources
Independent: SupaCV is not affiliated with or endorsed by Microsoft. This is one well-documented shape of Microsoft's interviews, not a script: processes change and vary by role, team, level, and region, so confirm specifics with your recruiter.
On this page
01 / For every Microsoft candidate
The process, start to finish.
Microsoft's interview process today runs predominantly virtually (Microsoft Teams, with some technical rounds on a third-party coding platform) and centers on a same-day "loop" of back-to-back interviews. Microsoft's own careers site confirms interviews are currently held over Teams and/or a third-party virtual tool.
The exact shape varies by role (Software Engineer/SDE, Program Manager/PM, Data Scientist, etc.), level, and team, but the skeleton is consistently described across IGotAnOffer, Exponent, JobTestPrep, and Microsoft's own careers site as recruiter screen, an optional online coding assessment, one or two phone/video screens, a multi-interview loop, and a final "As Appropriate" (AA, sometimes written ASAPP) interview with a senior leader.
Total elapsed time from first contact to offer is typically cited as roughly 2-6 weeks for experienced hires (IGotAnOffer and recruiter-side trackers put the fuller range at 3-8 weeks), and can stretch toward 2 months for student/new-grad pipelines that add an online assessment and more first-round touchpoints. Exact stage counts and durations vary by source and by role, so treat the figures below as typical ranges rather than guarantees.
Stage 1: Application / recruiter sourcing
Days to a few weeks; highly variable
A recruiter reviews the application or sources the candidate directly (common for experienced hires via LinkedIn). If there's a match, the recruiter reaches out to schedule a screen.
Stage 2: Online Assessment (OA), mainly students/new grads, sometimes technical experienced roles
60-90 minutes
A timed coding test, historically on HackerRank and now also seen on Codility depending on role and timing, typically 2-3 problems in a 60-90 minute window. Covers arrays/strings, hash maps, trees/graphs, and dynamic programming, generally in the LeetCode Medium range with occasional Hards. Not universal for experienced-hire roles.
Stage 3: Recruiter phone screen
30-45 minutes
Introductory call covering background, resume, motivation ('Why Microsoft?'), and role fit/logistics. For technical roles this can also include a light data-structures/algorithms discussion or brief coding exercise in a shared editor.
Stage 4: Hiring-manager screen and/or first-round technical interview(s)
30-60 minutes each
One or two additional pre-loop interviews (phone or video) with the hiring manager or a team member: behavioral questions, career trajectory/role-fit discussion, and for technical roles a coding or problem-solving round. Some candidates skip straight from recruiter screen to the loop; others do 1-2 of these first.
Stage 5: Onsite / virtual onsite loop
4-5 interviews (occasionally up to 6), 45-60 minutes each, same day
The core evaluation stage: back-to-back interviews held on the same day, each with a different interviewer (peers, cross-functional partners, sometimes the hiring manager). Most current sources converge on 4-5 interviews, though some describe as many as 6. For SDE roles this is typically several DSA/coding rounds, one system design round (SDE II and above), and one behavioral round; for PM/Program Manager roles it's mostly product-sense, design, estimation, and behavioral rounds. Each interviewer independently submits a 'Strong Hire / Hire / No Hire / Strong No Hire' recommendation afterward; a hire recommendation from essentially all interviewers is typically needed to advance.
Stage 6: "As Appropriate" (AA / ASAPP) interview
30-60 minutes
A final interview with a senior leader, often the hiring manager's manager or a director/VP-level executive, that only happens if the earlier loop interviews went well; getting invited to it is itself a strong positive signal. Important nuance: it is not purely a soft culture/impression chat. Multiple current sources describe the AA interviewer as reviewing the loop's feedback beforehand and specifically probing whatever looked weakest, which can include a technical follow-up if coding or system-design rounds were shaky, especially at senior levels. It functions as the real final gate, with the AA interviewer able to override a strong loop.
Stage 7: Decision and offer
Several days to ~2 weeks post-loop
Recruiter consolidates interviewer feedback (often via an internal hiring/committee review) and communicates the outcome. Candidates who pass are usually contacted within roughly 1-2 weeks to schedule the AA round or receive an offer; rejections are commonly reported within 10-14 days. Written offer letters can take an additional several days after a verbal offer, pending approvals/background checks.
Reported interview time, one scale in minutes
Where the minutes go
- Online Assessment , mainly students/new grads, sometimes technical experienced roles60 to 90 min
- Recruiter phone screen30 to 45 min
- Hiring-manager screen and/or first-round technical interview30 to 60 min
- Onsite / virtual onsite loop45 to 60 min
- "As Appropriate" interview30 to 60 min
Not drawn: Application / recruiter sourcing and Decision and offer, whose durations are not given in minutes.
02 / What Microsoft scores
The framework.
Microsoft's six core competencies (officially documented) plus "growth mindset" as an overarching cultural value
01
Collaboration
02
Drive for Results
03
Customer Focus
04
Influencing for Impact
05
Judgment
06
Adaptability
Microsoft's own careers site (careers.microsoft.com hiring-tips/interview-tips page) names these six competencies, worded exactly this way, as what interviewers assess candidates against, generally via the STAR/STAR(R) method (Situation, Task, Action, Result, Reflection), which the official page also names word for word. The list above is complete.
Separately and consistently across sources, Microsoft describes a cultural emphasis on 'growth mindset' (being a 'learn-it-all, not a know-it-all') and on inclusion/diversity, and interviewers are said to probe for curiosity, learning from feedback, and resilience when candidates discuss setbacks. Multiple third-party prep sites (e.g., SpaceComplexity, InterviewBaba, and similar SEO-oriented guides, which do publish this specific claim) assert there is a formal internal rubric that scores behavioral answers against four named 'Growth Mindset competencies' ('Learn & Be Curious', 'Model, Coach & Care', 'Create Clarity', 'Generate Energy') and that Microsoft 'formally adopted STAR since 2022.'
Read the rest of the framework notesShow less
These specific claims could NOT be corroborated on Microsoft's own materials (which name only the six competencies above) or on higher-confidence sources (IGotAnOffer, Exponent). They appear to conflate two different things: (1) Microsoft's separate, well-documented internal leadership framework for people-managers ('Create Clarity, Generate Energy, Deliver Success'; note: the third pillar 'Deliver Success' is often dropped in third-party retellings; developed with the NeuroLeadership Institute, with 'Model, Coach & Care' as a related manager-behavior framework), which describes how Microsoft managers lead teams day-to-day, not a documented candidate-interview scoring rubric; and (2) the six core competencies that ARE officially documented as the interview evaluation criteria.
Treat the four-competency 'GM scoring rubric' claim as unverified and likely inflated by SEO content, and rely on the six core competencies plus general growth-mindset framing as the credibly documented framework. Unlike Amazon's Leadership Principles or McKinsey's case framework, Microsoft has not published a single, named, universally-cited interview rubric with the same level of ubiquity. The six competencies are the closest official equivalent.
03 / Coach's notes
Coach's tips.
01
Structure every behavioral answer with STAR (or Microsoft's own suggested STAR(R): Situation, Task, Action, Result, Reflection) and make the 'Reflection' explicit: state the concrete behavioral change you made afterward, not just a stated lesson; interviewers are reportedly listening for that change as the strongest signal of growth mindset.
02
Explicitly connect your answers to Microsoft's language: frame stories around collaboration across teams, customer/user impact, driving results under ambiguity, and influencing without authority. These map to the six core competencies Microsoft's own careers site says interviewers grade against (Collaboration, Drive for Results, Customer Focus, Influencing for Impact, Judgment, Adaptability).
03
Treat the onsite loop as a single evaluation event, not independent interviews: each interviewer submits an independent Hire/No-Hire recommendation and a consistently weak signal in even one round can sink an otherwise strong loop, so maintain the same energy and clarity in interview 4 or 5 as in interview 1.
04
For SDE/technical roles, narrate your reasoning and Big-O tradeoffs out loud before and while coding. Multiple sources note Microsoft interviewers weight the reasoning process heavily and will give hints if your thought process is clear, which can save an otherwise-stuck solution.
05
For system design rounds (SDE II+), anchor designs in practical, operational tradeoffs (consistency, availability, scaling, caching) rather than pure theory, since Microsoft's system design prompts often skew toward realistic infrastructure/cloud-flavored scenarios reflecting Azure and enterprise-scale products.
06
If you advance to the final 'As Appropriate' (AA) interview, don't treat it as a soft formality you can coast through. The senior leader running it typically has your loop feedback in hand and will probe whatever looked weakest, which can mean a real technical follow-up, not just a culture chat. Go in ready to re-defend or clarify any rough moment from earlier rounds, in addition to asking thoughtful questions about the team/org.
04 / The research
Where this page comes from.
Compiled from public sources across 12 sites. Microsoft's own page is among them: careers.microsoft.com/v2/global/en/hiring-tips/interview-tips.html.
- sites
- 12
- coaching and prep guides
- 10
- candidate reports and forums
- 6
- Microsoft's own pages
- 3
Source composition
Where the research comes from
Grouped by the kind of site that published each source: Microsoft's own domain, candidate forums, and everything else.
- Coaching and prep guides10
- Candidate reports and forums6
- Microsoft's own pages3
05 / The questions
Reported questions, by category.
Showing questions for
Roles are grouped by the category each question fits, not by the source.
Coding / Data Structures & Algorithms
(SDE roles)
8 questions
Reverse a linked list / merge two sorted linked lists
Tests pointer manipulation on linked lists; iterative reversal and the two-pointer merge.
Two Sum / find pairs summing to a target in an array
Tests hash-map lookup for pair sums; the one-pass O(n) solution is expected.
Longest substring without repeating characters
Tests sliding-window technique on strings; interviewers expect the O(n) two-pointer insight.
Number of Islands (graph/grid BFS-DFS)
Tests grid traversal; BFS or DFS flood fill with visited marking.
Design and implement an LRU Cache
Classic design; hash map plus doubly linked list for O(1) get and put.
Validate a Binary Search Tree / Binary Tree Level Order Traversal / Lowest Common Ancestor
Tests tree recursion; BST validation with min/max bounds, level-order BFS, and LCA logic.
Merge Intervals / Insert Interval / Meeting Rooms II
Tests sorting plus a sweep; Meeting Rooms II adds a min-heap or event-count variant.
Classic dynamic-programming problems: coin change, climbing stairs, edit distance, word break
Tests dynamic programming; recognizing state definitions for coin change, edit distance, and word break.
Reported problems, listed so you know what to expect. Practice them in your own editor or on the platform you prefer; SupaCV's practice mode coaches how you talk through them.
System Design
(SDE II and above)
7 questions
Design a URL shortener (e.g., TinyURL/Bitly)
System design staple; key generation, collision handling, and caching the redirect path.
Design Twitter or a social-media news feed/timeline
System design; fan-out strategy, timeline caching, and hot spots from celebrity users.
Design a collaborative document editor (Google Docs-style)
System design; concurrent editing via OT or CRDTs, presence, and conflict resolution.
Design a distributed task scheduler / job-scheduling system
System design; job queues, worker coordination, retries, and exactly-once execution concerns.
Design a pub/sub messaging system
System design; topic partitioning, delivery guarantees, and consumer-group scaling.
Design a distributed cache
System design; consistent hashing, eviction policy, and cache-invalidation strategy.
Design a VM/resource allocation or sharded-database connection-string service (reflecting Microsoft's Azure/cloud focus)
System design with an Azure flavor; resource allocation, sharding, and connection routing.
Reported problems, listed so you know what to expect. Practice them in your own editor or on the platform you prefer; SupaCV's practice mode coaches how you talk through them.
Product Management / Product Sense
(PM & Program Manager roles)
6 questions
Design a product for a specific user group (e.g., 'design a product for volunteers' or 'design Outlook for a smartwatch')
What feature would you build to improve retention/engagement on a Microsoft product like Teams or Xbox?
Guesstimate/estimation questions (e.g., estimate a company's annual revenue, or how many of X fit in Y)
Walk me through how you would prioritize a backlog with limited engineering resources
How would you measure the success of a new feature launch?
Tell me about a product you admire and how you'd improve it
Every role
Behavioral / Growth Mindset & Core Competencies
8 questions
Tell me about a time you failed and what you learned from it (and what you changed afterward)
Describe a situation where you had to resolve a conflict with a teammate or disagreed with a technical decision
Tell me about a time you showed initiative on a project without being asked
Describe a time you had to influence someone without having direct authority over them
Tell me about a time you dealt with competing priorities or a tight deadline
Give an example of how you drove customer impact or made a decision based on user value
Describe a time you received tough feedback and how you responded
Tell me about a time you had to adapt quickly to a significant change
Every role
Product Management / Product Sense
(PM & Program Manager roles)
1 question
Describe a time you had to make a product decision with incomplete data
Your next step
Interviewing at Microsoft?
Make sure your resume gets you to the first round.
Practicing for Microsoft against your resume is in Interview Prep on Career.
Common questions
Quick answers.
How many stages are in Microsoft's interview process?
Microsoft has 7 stages, set out in The process.
What framework does Microsoft use to evaluate candidates?
The framework behind Microsoft's evaluation is set out in What Microsoft scores.
What kinds of questions does Microsoft ask?
Microsoft's questions fall into 4 categories, grouped in The questions.
How reliable is this Microsoft interview playbook?
It is compiled from public sources, and the evidence is in The research.
Sources (19)
Every public source this page was compiled from. Links open in a new tab.
12 sites, by sources
- igotanoffer.com3
- glassdoor.com3
- careers.microsoft.com2
- tryexponent.com2
- teamblind.com2
- jobtestprep.com1
- leetcode.com1
- interviewkickstart.com1
- neuroleadership.com1
- jdmeier.com1
- productalliance.com1
- devblogs.microsoft.com1
- 01careers.microsoft.com/v2/global/en/hiring-tips/interview-tips.html
- 02careers.microsoft.com/us/en/virtual-interview
- 03igotanoffer.com/en/advice/microsoft-interview-process
- 04igotanoffer.com/blogs/tech/microsoft-software-development-engineer-int…
- 05igotanoffer.com/blogs/product-manager/microsoft-program-manager-interv…
- 06tryexponent.com/blog/microsoft-interview-process
- 07tryexponent.com/guides/microsoft-pm-interview
- 08jobtestprep.com/microsoft-interview-process
- 09glassdoor.com/Interview/Microsoft-Interview-Questions-E1651.htm
- 10glassdoor.com/Interview/Microsoft-Software-Engineer-Interview-Questi…
- 11glassdoor.com/Interview/Microsoft-Product-Manager-Interview-Question…
- 12leetcode.com/problem-list/top-microsoft-questions
- 13interviewkickstart.com/blogs/articles/microsoft-system-design-interview-quest…
- 14teamblind.com/post/microsoft-online-assessment-mk4tw66n
- 15teamblind.com/post/microsoft-interview-results-timeline-ihr52za0
- 16neuroleadership.com/your-brain-at-work/microsoft-leadership-principles
- 17jdmeier.com/microsoft-leadership-principles
- 18productalliance.com/guides/microsoft-pm-interview-cheat-sheet
- 19devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20231017-00
Related reading
- STAR, XYZ, or CAR: Which Resume Bullet Formula Actually Works?STAR, XYZ and CAR all collapse to the same bullet in practice, why "quantify everything" is more contested than it sounds, and the one modern use of STAR that actually earns its keep.
- Jake's Resume: Why One LaTeX Template Took Over Tech HiringThe history behind the internet's most-copied resume template, why its formatting choices actually work, and how to get the same layout without touching LaTeX.
How similar companies interview
Compare Microsoft's process with other Big Tech companies in this playbook: