Download microsoft Placement Papers in MS Word and PDF Format for Job Interview

Having a job interview is seldom a pleasant experience. However, it doesn’t have to be pure torture as many interpret it. Many people fall into the trap of second guessing themselves. This creates worry, which can lead to panic. The end result is, someone else gets the job and not you.

Useful advice on how to behave and conduct yourself at your next job interview

Being prepared for the interview could mean the difference between getting the job and not. Employers will usually hire the person that makes the best impression at the interview. This is quite often over people who have far more skills, qualifications and experience. Being prepared can quite often make or break the interview. Have everything the employer wants handy. Making a fact or data sheet can make a very good impression. It shows the employer that you are keen and organized. Include referenced and your contact details. When asked about your previous work experience, try to stay positive. Think about how this experience has helped prepare you for the job on offer. Even if your last position wasn’t idea, remain positive. Keep to how this job has helped you and prepared you for this position. Don’t fall into the trap of being negative about former employers. This looks very bad and unprofessional.

You may want to try preparing some responses ahead of time. This will help you think on your feet when they ask you something that you may not expect. Think about how you can word things to put that all
important positive spin on them.

Generally, when you begin and interview there is a period of introduction. Once those have been completed, you may be offered the opportunity to speak about yourself. You should really try to keep this relevant to the current job offer. Although your personal life maybe of great interest, the time for an interview is limited so best stick to what they need to know and want to hear.

You may be asked to demonstrate your current knowledge of the company. You may be asked this directly or in the form of a question such as. Why would you like to work for us? Prepare yourself by doing some research about the company. This shows the employer that you have a genuine interest in working for them and are not afraid of doing some research.

Nearly every interview asks that dreaded question, what are your weaknesses? The worst answer that you can give is none at all. Everyone has weaknesses so this answer will not impress. This question is more a test of your answering skills than anything. Speak about how you deal with your weaknesses. I make lists of things to do to make sure I remember everything or I use spell check to make sure everything is correct. This answers show your weaknesses and how you cope.

You will also likely get the opportunity to speak about your strengths. Although you may have many, keep these relevant to the job on offer. Again, interview time is limited and you don’t want to waste opportunities.


Preparing yourself ahead of time and knowing what to expect can make a great difference in how well you perform in an interview. By being able to handle yourself well, you’ll be able to make that important first impression.

General - Interview
1. What are your interests? ( as in academics/topics)

2. Some Questions on the projects listed on your resume?

3.Which is your favorite subject? Some questions from that subject.

4. Something about yourself, your hobbies, interests, strengths and weakness?

5.What subjects did you like most in University and why?

6.Talk about what inspires you the most right now.

7.Why would you like to work for us?

8.How long would you expect to work for us if hired?

9.What is more important to you: the money or the work?

10.Do you have any questions for me?

Microsoft frequently asked interview questions, Technical interview Questions, Job interview Questions for new campus recruitment of freshers

Microsoft interview Questions

1.What is the difference between a class and object?

2.Find the intersection of two linked lists.

3.How do you sort a linked list using the most efficient algorithm?

4. What is stored procedure? What are its advantages and disavantages?

5. Which is better trigger or stored procedure?

6.How to test a calculator?

7.Write a procedure to shuffle cards, and also mention strengths and shortcomings of your approach

8. Differnce between interfaces and abstract classes?

9.Validate a Binary search tree? ( as in the left- right child follow the property )

10.Print the binary tree in zig-zag order.

11.Sorting problem. About array

12.Whats the difference b/w a thread and a process? are Word and PowerPoint different processes or threads of a single process?

13.How does a spell checker routine (common to both, word and PowerPoint) used?

14.Design Memory Management System

15.Give all possible test cases to test the basic features of a mobile.

16. In unix there is a command called "tail". Implement that command in C.

17. Some questions about race condition (OS)

18. Questions related to semaphores.

19. Questions related to mutex. Applications of mutex. How to implement mutex in OS?

20. What is difference between data set and data reader?(.net)

21. Write a querry for accesing unique rows from emp(Ename,Age) sorted by age?

22. What is the difference between Function overloading, Function Overriding and Virtual Functions?

23. Difference between multiple and multilevel inheritence?

24. Questions about Critical region (OS).

25. Problem to find median of two shorted arrays

26. How to ensure that race condition doesn,t occur. Give your view as you are OS designer.

27.. How to ensure that each process lock the critical region before they enter in it. As OS designer How will you force the process to do this?

28. Questions on IPC

29. Questions on Shared memory and Message passing mechanism.

30. Difference between system call and API call

31. How system call works? What happens when system call is invoked?

32.Remove a node from Linked list when address of same node is given

33. Different types of system calls?

34.. Some questions from microprocessor. About Interrupts

35. Types of Interrupts. What happened when interrupt is called?

36.Given a set of strings. Check if a new string is equal to any of them. Here equal means the letters are the same, like abbc=bacb

37. You are given a hard copy of a program which contains some errors. Your job is to find all types of errors from it. And discuss why is it an error. Write correct program for the same.

38. You are given a linked list and a number n. You also have a function to delete all nodes from that list which are at position which multiple of n in the list.

39.Given a string, search it in a set of strings (say among 1000s of string). What data structure would you use to store those 1000 strings and get the results fastest?

40.Reverse a linked list?

41.Find if there is a loop in a linked List?

42.Given two arrays of numbers, find if each of the two arrays have the same set of integers ? Suggest an algo which can run faster than NlogN ?

43. Questions on Java. Exception handling

44. Need of catch and finally block in Java exception handling..

45. How will you create your own exception.. Explain with example.

46. Some questions on compiler construction. What is parser? What is input to the parser and what is output of parser? Difference between top down and bottom up parser.

47.Write an algorithm to find the depth of a binary tree

48.
Develop recursive program.
F(1) = 1.
F(2n) = F (n) and F(2n+1) = F(n) + F(n+1).

49.Write an algorithm to separate all zeroes and ones in an array

50.How to detect the starting point of loop in a linked list which has a loop

1. Analytical 25 questions ( 30 minutes)
2. Reasoning 25 questions (25 minutes)
3. Verbal 20 questions (20 minutes)


Analytical (some what easy to attempt)

Logical:

1. Data sufficiency problems

2. Comparing similarity

Verbal:

1. similar meanings
2. antonyms
3. passages
4.synonyms

Some sample Questions

In a X,s and 0,s game (i.e. TIC TAC TOE) if you write a program for this give a fast way to generate the moves by the computer. I mean this should be the fastest way possible.
ANS:- The answer is that you need to store all possible configurations of the board and the move that is associated with that. Then it boils down to just accessing the right element and getting the corresponding move for it. Do some analysis and do some more optimization in storage since otherwise it becomes infeasible to get the required storage in a DOS machine.


I was given two lines of assembly code which found the absolute value of a number stored in two,s complement form. I had to recognize what the code was doing. Pretty simple if you know some assembly and some fundas on number representation.

3 Give a fast way to multiply a number by 7.

4. How would go about finding out where to find a book in a library. (You don,t know how exactly the books are organized beforehand).

5. Linked list manipulation.

6. Tradeoff between time spent in testing a product and getting into the market first.

7. What to test for given that there isn,t enough time to test everything you want to.

8. First some definitions for this problem: a) An ASCII character is one byte long and the most significant bit in the byte is always ,0,. b) A Kanji character is two bytes long. The only characteristic of a Kanji character is that in its first byte the most significant bit is ,1,. Now you are given an array of a characters (both ASCII and Kanji) and, an index into the array. The index points to the start of some character. Now you need to write a function to do a backspace (i.e. delete the character before the given index).

9. Give a one-line C expression to test whether a number is a power of 2. [No loops allowed - it,s a simple test.

10. Given an array of characters which form a sentence of words, give an efficient algorithm to reverse the order of the words (not characters) in it.

11. Given an array of integers, find the contiguous sub-array with the largest sum.
ANS. Can be done in O(n) time and O(1) extra space. Scan array from 1 to n. Remember the best sub-array seen so far and the best sub-array ending in i.

12. Given an array of length N containing integers between 1 and N, determine if it contains any duplicates.
ANS. [Is there an O(n) time solution that uses only O(1) extra space and does not destroy the original array?]

13. Sort an array of size n containing integers between 1 and K, given a temporary scratch integer array of size K.
ANS. Compute cumulative counts of integers in the auxiliary array. Now scan the original array, rotating cycles! [Can someone word this more nicely?]

14. C++ ( what is virtual function ? what happens if an error occurs in constructor or destructor. Discussion on error handling, templates, unique features of C++. What is different in C++, ( compare with Unix).

15. Given a list of numbers ( fixed list) Now given any other list, how can you efficiently find out if there is any element in the second list that is an element of the first list (fixed list).

16. I was a c++ code and was asked to find out the bug in that. The bug was that he declared an object locally in a function and tried to return the pointer to that object. Since the object is local to the function, it no more exists after returning from the function. The pointer, therefore, is invalid outside.

17. A real life problem - A square picture is cut into 16 squares and they are shuffled. Write a program to rearrange the 16 squares to get the original big square.

78.
int *a;
char *c;
*(a) = 20;
*c = *a;
printf("%c",*c);

18what is the output?

19 Write a program to find whether a given m/c is big-endian or little-endian!

20 What is a volatile variable?

21 What is the scope of a static function in C ?

22. What is the difference between "malloc" and "calloc"?

23. struct n { int data; struct n* next}node;
node *c,*t;
c->data = 10;
t->next = null;
*c = *t;
what is the effect of the last statement?

24. If you,re familiar with the ? operator x ? y : z
you want to implement that in a function: int cond(int x, int y, int z); using only ~, !, ^, &, +, |, <<, >> no if statements, or loops or anything else, just those operators, and the function should correctly return y or z based on the value of x. You may use constants, but only 8 bit constants. You can cast all you want. You,re not supposed to use extra variables, but in the end, it won,t really matter, using variables just makes things cleaner. You should be able to reduce your solution to a single line in the end though that requires no extra vars.

25 You have an abstract computer, so just forget everything you know about computers, this one only does what I,m about to tell you it does. You can use as many variables as you need, there are no negative numbers, all numbers are integers. You do not know the size of the integers, they could be infinitely large, so you can,t count on truncating at any point. There are NO comparisons allowed, no if statements or anything like that. There are only four operations you can do on a variable.
1) You can set a variable to 0.
2) You can set a variable = another variable.
3) You can increment a variable (only by 1), and it,s a post increment.
26) You can loop. So, if you were to say loop(v1) and v1 = 10, your loop would execute 10 times, but the value in v1 wouldn,t change so the first line in the loop can change value of v1 without changing the number of times you loop.
You need to do 3 things.
1) Write a function that decrements by 1.
2) Write a function that subtracts one variable from another.
3) Write a function that divides one variable by another.
4) See if you can implement all 3 using at most 4 variables. Meaning, you,re not making function calls now, you,re making macros. And at most you can have 4 variables. The restriction really only applies to divide, the other 2 are easy to do with 4 vars or less. Division on the other hand is dependent on the other 2 functions, so, if subtract requires 3 variables, then divide only has 1 variable left unchanged after a call to subtract. Basically, just make your function calls to decrement and subtract so you pass your vars in by reference, and you can,t declare any new variables in a function, what you pass in is all it gets.
Linked lists

27. Under what circumstances can one delete an element from a singly linked list in constant time?

ANS. If the list is circular and there are no references to the nodes in the list from anywhere else! Just copy the contents of the next node and delete the next node. If the list is not circular, we can delete any but the last node using this idea. In that case, mark the last node as dummy!

28. Given a singly linked list, determine whether it contains a loop or not.

ANS. (a) Start reversing the list. If you reach the head, gotcha! there is a loop! But this changes the list. So, reverse the list again.
(b) Maintain two pointers, initially pointing to the head. Advance one of them one node at a time. And the other one, two nodes at a time. If the latter overtakes the former at any time, there is a loop!

p1 = p2 = head;

do {

p1 = p1->next;

p2 = p2->next->next;

} while (p1 != p2);



29. Given a singly linked list, print out its contents in reverse order. Can you do it without using any extra space?

ANS. Start reversing the list. Do this again, printing the contents.

30 Given a binary tree with nodes, print out the values in pre-order/in-order/post-order without using any extra space.

31 Reverse a singly linked list recursively. The function prototype is node * reverse (node *) ;

node * reverse (node * n)

{

node * m ;

if (! (n && n -> next))

return n ;

m = reverse (n -> next) ;

n -> next -> next = n ;

n -> next = NULL ;

return m ;
}


32. Given a singly linked list, find the middle of the list.

HINT. Use the single and double pointer jumping. Maintain two pointers, initially pointing to the head. Advance one of them one node at a time. And the other one, two nodes at a time. When the double reaches the end, the single is in the middle. This is not asymptotically faster but seems to take less steps than going through the list twice.

33. Reverse the bits of an unsigned integer.


#define reverse(x) \

(x=x>>16|(0x0000ffff&x)<<16, \

x=(0xff00ff00&x)>>8|(0x00ff00ff&x)<<8, \

x=(0xf0f0f0f0&x)>>4|(0x0f0f0f0f&x)<<4, \

x=(0xcccccccc&x)>>2|(0x33333333&x)<<2, \

x=(0xaaaaaaaa&x)>>1|(0x55555555&x)<<1)

34. Compute the number of ones in an unsigned integer.

#define count_ones(x) \

(x=(0xaaaaaaaa&x)>>1+(0x55555555&x), \

x=(0xcccccccc&x)>>2+(0x33333333&x), \

x=(0xf0f0f0f0&x)>>4+(0x0f0f0f0f&x), \

x=(0xff00ff00&x)>>8+(0x00ff00ff&x), \

x=x>>16+(0x0000ffff&x))

35. Compute the discrete log of an unsigned integer.

ANS.

#define discrete_log(h) \

(h=(h>>1)|(h>>2), \

h|=(h>>2), \

h|=(h>>4), \

h|=(h>>8), \

h|=(h>>16), \

h=(0xaaaaaaaa&h)>>1+(0x55555555&h), \

h=(0xcccccccc&h)>>2+(0x33333333&h), \

h=(0xf0f0f0f0&h)>>4+(0x0f0f0f0f&h), \

h=(0xff00ff00&h)>>8+(0x00ff00ff&h), \

h=(h>>16)+(0x0000ffff&h))

If I understand it right, log2(2) =1, log2(3)=1, log2(4)=2..... But this macro does not work out log2(0) which does not exist! How do you think it should be handled?

36. How do we test most simply if an unsigned integer is a power of two?

ANS. #define power_of_two(x) \ ((x)&&(~(x&(x-1))))

37. Set the highest significant bit of an unsigned integer to zero.

ANS. (from Denis Zabavchik) Set the highest significant bit of an unsigned integer to zero
#define zero_most_significant(h) \
(h&=(h>>1)|(h>>2), \
h|=(h>>2), \
h|=(h>>4), \
h|=(h>>8), \
h|=(h>>16))

38. Let f(k) = y where k is the y-th number in the increasing sequence of non-negative integers with the same number of ones in its binary representation as y, e.g. f(0) = 1, f(1) = 1, f(2) = 2, f(3) = 1, f(4) = 3, f(5) = 2, f(6) = 3 and so on. Given k >= 0, compute f(k).

39. A character set has 1 and 2 byte characters. One byte characters have 0 as the first bit. You just keep accumulating the characters in a buffer. Suppose at some point the user types a backspace, how can you remove the character efficiently. (Note: You cant store the last character typed because the user can type in arbitrarily many backspaces)

40. What is the simples way to check if the sum of two unsigned integers has resulted in an overflow.

24. How do you represent an n-ary tree? Write a program to print the nodes of such a tree in breadth first order.

41. Write the ,tr, program of UNIX. Invoked as tr -str1 -str2. It reads stdin and prints it out to stdout, replacing every occurance of str1 with str2.

e.g. tr -abc -xyz
to be and not to be <- input
to ye xnd not to ye <- outpu

My experience Microsoft conducted on 22nd December, 2010.

First round was a written test of an hour. There were 6 questions (4 programming and 2 test cases) 10 marks each.



1) Find output of following code?
void main()

{
void *ptr;
char *a=,A,;
char *b="TAN";
int i=50;
ptr=a;
ptr=(*char)malloc(sizeof(a));
printf("%c",*ptr);
ptr=i;
ptr=(*int)malloc(sizeof(i));
printf("%d",++(*ptr));
ptr=b;
ptr=(*char)malloc(sizeof(b));
printf("%c",++(*ptr));

}
Ans: A51AN

2) Write a program that takes a no. from user and prints the no. subtracting 5 each time from the no. till the no. doesn’t crosses/reaches 0.And again prints the nos. Now increasing 5 each time till the no. doesn’t reaches/crosses original no. Don,t use any loops or goto stmnt. And don,t declare any local variables.

Ans: use recursion.

3) Convert a no. from string to integer.

Eg: str:"1234"
convert to int a=1234;

Ans: while(*ptr!=NULL)
{
a=(a*10)+(*ptr-48);

}
4) Find the subarray of an array that has the greatest sum? Array contains both +ve as well as -ve nos.

Ans: I did it using 3 loops but when I went for the 2nd technical round the interviewer told me a very simple and optimal program for the same.
sumtillnow=0;
sum=0;
for(i=0;i< p=""> <>
{
sumtillnow+=a[i];
if(sumtillnow>sum)
sum=sumtillnow;
if(sumtillnow<=0)
sumtillnow=0;
}

5) Write test cases for a student regestration form.
6) Write test cases for a web search engine.

20 students were shortlisted after the written test.

1st technical round.

First he saw my resume and asked me few questions about my BE Project and the TE Project. Then I was asked many questions from OOP concepts. Mainly about virtual functions, pure virtual functions (application based) and v-table etc.

Then he asked me some ques from OS.

1) Critical section
2) Semaphores
3) Processes
4) Threads
5) Reader Writers problem

Then there were a few questions from Logic Gates
1) Half adder....circuit and functionality

2) Full adder....circuit and functionality
Then he asked me 2 puzzles.

1) There are 3 buckets full of oranges, apples and mixture of both. Buckets are labeled with orange, apple and mixture. And it is known that all labels are false. Now just pick up 1 fruit from any 1 of the buckets and label all of them correctly.

Ans: Hint: pick the fruit from mixed labeled basket.

2) There are 5 bags containing marbles. All are identical. 4 of them weight 9g one of them is 10g. You have a weighing balance. In one go can u tell which is the bag with 10g.
Ans: I was blank. Min I could produce was in 3 chances.

In 1st round other students were also asked question from DBMS (Normalization, few queries and ER diagrams). And question from TOC (Finite automata machine). Draw a finite automata to accept a binary no. that is divisible by 5.

2nd Round
He asked me some test cases.

Then the interviewer asked me to optimize certain codes.

1) 4th question of the written exam. (Subarry sum)

2) An array of n elements contains elements 1-(n-1) in random order and 1 entry is duplicated. Find the duplicate entry?
Ans: I told him to take one more array. Now pick the elements from 1st array and put them into respective index of the 2nd array. If duplicate occur then report and end the loop.

He asked me to optimize the code. Then I suggested a BST. He asked me to optimize more and more and more and more this question.

But somehow I was advanced for the 3rd round. I was very excited.

3rd Round: HR

Some test cases and Why should I take you in Microsoft.

But unfortunately I wasn’t able to make it: (But may be these questions will help you for your placements)

MICROSOFT PAPER ON 24TH MAY AT MUMBAI

Hi to One & all who r reading this . I m xyz .
For all who r trying for Microsoft or any other company, My one suggestion is that be perfect in basics. If u r perfect in basics u can crack any interview. So Don’t loss u r hopes if u have not got recruited still.
“NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE IN THIS WORLD ,BECAUSE IMPOSSIBLE ALSO SAYS THAT I M POSSIBLE”
Ok coming to the Microsoft Test which I attended.I attended on 24th May 2008. It was in Thakur Polytechnic College. In Mumbai.

It had
1] Written test
2] Group Discussion
3] Followed by Multiple Technical Rounds.

Written test was for 2 hours.
I remember only few question
1.Aptitude
2.C
3.C++
4.Datastructure
5.os
6.Algorithms
7.RDBMS
8..Net

I don’t remember questions, as I had written test a month before .How much I remember I m writing here.
1.There was question on Analytical Reasoning , which had 5 questions
2.They gave a square like this. And told to find total number of squares.

Ans is 55=Sq(5)+Sq(4)+Sq(3)+Sq(2)+Sq(1)
3.Some Questions on Probability.
4.C paper was some what easy. Many Question were on pointers, Strings.
5.In C++ questions were on Inheritance . Some ops
6.In Data Structure they asked to write o/p of very big programs. Which was time consuming.
7.In RDBMS , some questions were on normal forms . And all Basics
8.In Os one question was on LRU Algorithms. Many Basic questions were asked. But it was some what difficult.
9..Net Questions they asked was all basics

I think around 450-500 students appeared for test , and only 50 students were short listed for GD round.

Package was 8.9 Lacks Only.So Work hard ,Be perfect in Basics
All the Best to one & every one.

MICROSOFT PAPER ON 26th JULY

Selection procedure and interview questions of Microsoft at Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology (DA-IICT)

There were 4 rounds for selection procedure. First round was a written test, second round was group interview and 3rd and 4th rounds were technical interview. Each round had eliminations. Total 143 students were eligible for written test and 16 students were selected for the next round, ie. group interview. Only 8 students were able to go for 3rd round of technical interview. In 3rd round 4 more students were eliminated and remaining 4 students went for final round of technical interview. Only 1 student got an offer finally from Microsoft.

Following is the detail about each round.

Note: All examples which I will give here are just for your understanding. Interviewer was not giving any examples. Hardly 2 – 3 time interviewer gave examples.

Round 1: Written test
Paper style: 3 subjective questions
Time limit: 1½ hour

Question 1: Finding output....
It was string cruncher program. First remove all repeated consecutive substring with length 1, then delete substring of length 2 and so on...
Example : string is “abcabeccced”

After removing repeated substring of length 1: “abcababceccced” --> “abcababceced” (2 ,c, are removed)
After removing repeated substring of length 2: “abcababceced” --> “abcabceced” (substring “ab” is removed)
and so on...

Question 2: Writing a program.
Definition: You are given 3 integer arrays A, B and C of length n1, n2 and n3 respectively. All arrays are sorted. We define triplet of these 3 arrays as (x,y,z) where x is any integer from A, y from B and z from C. We define distance of triplet as maximum difference among triplet elements, i.e. Maximum of x – y, y – z or z – x. Write a program to find minimum triplet distance. (means there are n1*n2*n3 number of possible triplets are possible...among all triplets which triplet has minimum distance...Give only distance, but not triplet elements). Your program must be as much efficient as possible.

Question 3: Writing program.
Definition: You are given 2 integer numbers in linked list form. Add those 2 numbers.

Example: First number is 234 and second number is 35. So, you are provided with 2 linked lists 2->3->4 and 3->5. Your answer must be 2->6->9. (Make sure to take care of carry number). This example was given in paper.

Round 2: Group Interview
All candidates who had cleared the written test were called for group interview. Here we were given 3 problems one by one. Time limit was between 15 to 20 minutes. Once they gave problem definition we were supposed to think on it and discuss our ideas and logic about solving that problem with one of the representatives from Microsoft. Once that representative was convinced with our logic then we had to write code for that problem on paper.

Problem 1: You are given a string. Develop a function to remove duplicate characters from that string. String could be of any length. Your algorithm must be in space. If you wish you can use constant size extra space which is not dependent any how on string size. Your algorithm must be of complexity of O(n). Example: Given string is BANANAS. Output must be BANS. All repeated characters are removed.

Problem 2: You have a tree and address of its root. Write an efficient program to test whether a given tree is Binary search Tree or not. (Hint: In-order traversal of binary search tree is sorted in increasing order. Use this property to develop program)

Problem 3: You have 2 sorted lists and a function that merge that 2 lists such that output is again sorted and duplicates are removed. That means output is union of those 2 lists in sorted form.

Example: First list is 2->3->5->6->8 and second list is 4->5->6->7 and output of function is 2->3->4->5->6->7->8.

Develop test cases to test given function such that your test cases ensures that given function works for every situation. That is if inputs are valid then it gives proper output in any case or otherwise it shows error message.

Round 3: First Technical Interview
All those who had cleared group interview were called for first technical interview. They were taking minimum 2 hours for first interview. Some of us also faced interview for 3 or more hours.

Round 4: Second Technical Interview
All those who had cleared first technical interview were called for second interview. This was last round of interview. They took 1½ to 2 hours for this second interview.

I don,t remember all the questions which were asked to me in both interviews. But still some of the questions which I can remember (almost 80 to 90% questions) are listed below.

In both interview they ask questions from C/C++, java, OS, Data structure and algorithms, Microprocessors and compiler constructions. With this, they also asked me to develop more than 6 to 8 programs. You can develop all programs in 5 to 7 minutes. But after writing program they asked to find its complexity and try to reduce the complexity and write the program again. In this way it took almost 15 to 20 min for each program. Some took less than 15 minutes also.

Some of the interview questions are as follows:

You are given a linked list and block size k. Reverse block of size k from list.

For example you are given linked list of 1000 nodes and block size is 5 then instead of reversing whole list, reverse first 5 elements, then 6 to 10 elements, then 11 to 15 elements, and so on...You have singly linked list and your algorithm which you will implement must be in space, that is no extra space is allowed.

You are given a tree and any 2 nodes of that tree. Find common parent of both nodes. Develop as much efficient program as you can.

In unix there is a command called “tail”. Implement that command in C.

Some questions about race condition (OS)

Questions related to semaphores.

Questions related to mutex. Applications of mutex. How to implement mutex in OS?

Questions about Critical region (OS).

How to ensure that race condition doesn,t occur. Give your view as you are OS designer.

How to ensure that each process lock the critical region before they enter in it. As OS designer How will you force the process to do this?

Questions on IPC

Questions on Shared memory and Message passing mechanism.

Difference between system call and API call

How system call works? What happens when system call is invoked?

Different types of system calls?

Some questions from microprocessor. About Interrupts

Types of Interrupts. What happened when interrupt is called?

You are given a hard copy of a program which contains some errors. Your job is to find all types of errors from it. And discuss why is it an error. Write correct program for the same.

You are given a linked list and a number n. You also have a function to delete all nodes from that list which are at position which multiple of n in the list.

Example: if number is 3 then delete 3rd, 6th, 9th ,...nodes form the list. Develop a program that tests whether given function works properly or not. (In short they are asking me to develop general program for all test cases. By running that program all tests can be performed.)

Questions on java. Exception handling

Need of catch and finally block in java exception handling..

How will you create your own exception.. Explain with example.

Some questions on compiler construction. What is parser? What is input to the parser and what is output of parser? Difference between top down and bottom up parser.

F(1) = 1.
F(2n) = F (n) and F(2n+1) = F(n) + F(n+1).
Develop recursive program.

You are given a string which contains some special characters. You also have set of special characters. You are given other string (call it as pattern string). Your job is to write a program to replace each special characters in given string by pattern string. You are not allowed to create new resulting string. You need to allocate some new memory to given existing string but constraint is you can only allocate memory one time. Allocate memory exactly what you need not more not less.

Assume that your friend is writing a book . He gives you a file that contains that book. Your job is to develop an algorithm for indexing of that book. In every book there is one index at end which contains some words which are not there in normal vocabulary dictionary. It also contains page number for reference. You can use any data structure you want. You need to justify why you have used that data structure and also need to justify your logic.

Question from my B.E. final semester project. Asked me to explain whole project.

Question from everything written on my resume.

Question from my every project I did. They asked me to explain each project and then how to do some modification? That modification will be suggested by interviewer himself.

My experience in Teaching assistantship.

They had my written test answer sheet. They opened it and asked me to explain why I gave that output or why I implement that logic. How did I arrive to that solution which I had written in answer sheet.

In written test, for second question I had implement a program which was not much efficient. During interview they ask me to optimize my program. They also gave hint to optimize it.

During group interview, in second problem I was only able to discuss logic I was unable to develop program in given time limit. Interviewer knew this. She asked me to develop that program during interview.

Which is your favorite software tool? If you are allowed to add any feature in it which feature you will add?

Which is your favorite subject? Some questions from that subject.

Something about yourself , your hobbies, interests, strengths and weakness.

I was unable to clear 4th round that is second technical interview. I hope this will help you in your preparation for Microsoft

I had questions like following:-
1. What is the difference between a class and object?
2. What is stored procedure? What are its advantages and disavantages?
3. Which is better trigger or stored procedure?
4. What is difference between data set and data reader?(.net)
5. Write a querry for accesing unique rows from emp(Ename,Age) sorted by age?
6. What is the difference between Function overloading, Function Overriding and Virtual Functions?
7. Difference between multiple and multilevel inheritence?
8. Differnce between interfaces and abstract classes?

These Are one of the Microsoft Interview Questions

1. What are your interests? ( as in academics/topics)
    
2. Given a string, search it in a set of strings (say among 1000s of string). What data structure would you use to store those 1000 strings and get the results fastest?
   
    Answer:I answered hash tables but he said suggest a better
          one.He said suggest a better one and then gave me one
          Tree sort of DS and then asked me to compare the two.
3. Reverse a linked list?
   
    
4. Find if there is a loop in a linked List?
   
    
5. Given two arrays of numbers, find if each of the two arrays have the same set of integers ? Suggest an algo which can run faster than NlogN ?
   
    
6. Validate a Binary search tree? ( as in the left- right child follow the property )
    

      Well i gave a the some weird eg where the struct was not 
      a Binary tree but if passed through the test will give 
      positive results.then he asked me to solve for that too.

Round 2:
The interviewer gets a bit serious with each stage. He will test ur work for all possible set of inputs.

Prologue: Well in my case he started with how they require not only a programmer but a designer and coder who writes perfect code.

1. Write a routine that takes input as a string such as
    

              "aabbccdef" and o/p "a2b2c2def" 
         or 
              "a4bd2g4" for "aaaabddgggg"
   

   
   write it perfectly as if it should ready to be shipped after you code it.
    

2. In the same Question (q1) why will u o/p "abc" for the i/p "abc" instead of "a1b1c1" ?
   
    
3. Given a NxN matrix with 0s and 1s. now whenever you encounter a 0 make the corresponding row and column elements 0.
   
   Flip 1 to 0 and 0 remains as they are.
   
   for example
   1 0 1 1 0
   0 1 1 1 0
   1 1 1 1 1
   1 0 1 1 1
   1 1 1 1 1
   
   results in
   
   0 0 0 0 0
   0 0 0 0 0
   0 0 1 1 0
   0 0 0 0 0
   0 0 1 1 0

Round 3:

1. Some Questions on the projects listed on your resume?
    

         For me some Qs on DB Lock Manager?  

2. Given 2 set of arrays of size N(sorted +ve integers ) find the median of the resultent array of size 2N.
   (dont even think of sorting the two arrays in a third array , though u can sort them. Try something better than order N ..order LogN )
   
    
3. Given 1000 bottles of juice, one of them contains poison and tastes bitter. Spot the spoiled bottle in minimum sips?
   
    
4. Whats the difference b/w a thread and a process? are Word and PowerPoint different processes or threads of a single process?
   
    
5. How does a spell checker routine (common to both, word and PowerPoint) used? I mean is the code copied 2 times for each of the processes in the main memory, if they are different processes or how is it used if they are threads.

Microsoft Interview Questions and Answers

 

1. How could you determine if a linked list contains a cycle in it, and, at what node the cycle starts?

There are a number of approaches. The approach I shared is in time N (where N is the number of nodes in your linked list). Assume that the node definition contains a boolean flag, bVisited.
struct Node
{
...
bool bVisited;
};

Then, to determine whether a node has a loop, you could first set this flag to false for all of the nodes:
// Detect cycle
// Note: pHead points to the head of the list (assume already exists)
Node *pCurrent = pHead;
while (pCurrent)
{
pCurrent->bVisited = false;
pCurrent = pCurrent->pNext;
}

A much better approach was submitted by 4Guys visitor George R., a Microsoft interviewer/employee. He recommended using the following technique, which is in time O(N) and space O(1).

Use two pointers.

// error checking and checking for NULL at end of list omitted
p1 = p2 = head;

do {
p1 = p1-gt;next;
p2 = p2-gt;next->next;
} while (p1 != p2);

p2 is moving through the list twice as fast as p1. If the list is circular, (i.e. a cycle exists) it will eventually get around to that sluggard, p1.

2. How would you reverse a doubly-linked list?

This problem isn,t too hard. You just need to start at the head of the list, and iterate to the end. At each node, swap the values of pNext and pPrev. Finally, set pHead to the last node in the list.

Node * pCurrent = pHead, *pTemp;
while (pCurrent)
{ pTemp = pCurrent-gt;pNext;
pCurrent-gt;pNext = pCurrent->pPrev;
pCurrent-gt;pPrev = temp;

pHead = pCurrent;

pCurrent = temp;
}

3. Assume you have an array that contains a number of strings (perhaps char * a[100]). Each string is a word from the dictionary. Your task, described in high-level terms, is to devise a way to determine and display all of the anagrams within the array (two words are anagrams if they contain the same characters; for example, tales and slate are anagrams.)

Begin by sorting each element in the array in alphabetical order. So, if one element of your array was slate, it would be rearranged to form aelst (use some mechanism to know that the particular instance of aelst maps to slate). At this point, you slate and tales would be identical: aelst.
Next, sort the entire array of these modified dictionary words. Now, all of the anagrams are grouped together. Finally, step through the array and display duplicate terms, mapping the sorted letters (aelst) back to the word (slate or tales).

4. Given the following prototype:
int compact(int * p, int size);

write a function that will take a sorted array, possibly with duplicates, and compact the array, returning the new length of the array. That is, if p points to an array containing: 1, 3, 7, 7, 8, 9, 9, 9, 10, when the function returns, the contents of p should be: 1, 3, 7, 8, 9, 10, with a length of 5 returned.

A single loop will accomplish this.

int compact(int * p, int size)
{
int current, insert = 1;
for (current=1; current < size; current++)
if (p[current] != p[insert-1])
{
p[insert] = p[current];
current++;
insert++;
} else
current++;
}

 

 

 

  

MICROSOFT PAPER ON 26th JULY

Selection procedure and interview questions of Microsoft at Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology (DA-IICT)

There were 4 rounds for selection procedure. First round was a written test, second round was group interview and 3rd and 4th rounds were technical interview. Each round had eliminations. Total 143 students were eligible for written test and 16 students were selected for the next round, ie. group interview. Only 8 students were able to go for 3rd round of technical interview. In 3rd round 4 more students were eliminated and remaining 4 students went for final round of technical interview. Only 1 student got an offer finally from Microsoft.

Following is the detail about each round.

Note: All examples which I will give here are just for your understanding. Interviewer was not giving any examples. Hardly 2 – 3 time interviewer gave examples.

Round 1: Written test
Paper style: 3 subjective questions
Time limit: 1½ hour

Question 1: Finding output....
It was string cruncher program. First remove all repeated consecutive substring with length 1, then delete substring of length 2 and so on...
Example : string is “abcabeccced”

After removing repeated substring of length 1: “abcababceccced” --> “abcababceced” (2 ,c, are removed)
After removing repeated substring of length 2: “abcababceced” --> “abcabceced” (substring “ab” is removed)
and so on...

Question 2: Writing a program.
Definition: You are given 3 integer arrays A, B and C of length n1, n2 and n3 respectively. All arrays are sorted. We define triplet of these 3 arrays as (x,y,z) where x is any integer from A, y from B and z from C. We define distance of triplet as maximum difference among triplet elements, i.e. Maximum of x – y, y – z or z – x. Write a program to find minimum triplet distance. (means there are n1*n2*n3 number of possible triplets are possible...among all triplets which triplet has minimum distance...Give only distance, but not triplet elements). Your program must be as much efficient as possible.

Question 3: Writing program.
Definition: You are given 2 integer numbers in linked list form. Add those 2 numbers.

Example: First number is 234 and second number is 35. So, you are provided with 2 linked lists 2->3->4 and 3->5. Your answer must be 2->6->9. (Make sure to take care of carry number). This example was given in paper.

Round 2: Group Interview
All candidates who had cleared the written test were called for group interview. Here we were given 3 problems one by one. Time limit was between 15 to 20 minutes. Once they gave problem definition we were supposed to think on it and discuss our ideas and logic about solving that problem with one of the representatives from Microsoft. Once that representative was convinced with our logic then we had to write code for that problem on paper.

Problem 1: You are given a string. Develop a function to remove duplicate characters from that string. String could be of any length. Your algorithm must be in space. If you wish you can use constant size extra space which is not dependent any how on string size. Your algorithm must be of complexity of O(n). Example: Given string is BANANAS. Output must be BANS. All repeated characters are removed.

Problem 2: You have a tree and address of its root. Write an efficient program to test whether a given tree is Binary search Tree or not. (Hint: In-order traversal of binary search tree is sorted in increasing order. Use this property to develop program)

Problem 3: You have 2 sorted lists and a function that merge that 2 lists such that output is again sorted and duplicates are removed. That means output is union of those 2 lists in sorted form.

Example: First list is 2->3->5->6->8 and second list is 4->5->6->7 and output of function is 2->3->4->5->6->7->8.

Develop test cases to test given function such that your test cases ensures that given function works for every situation. That is if inputs are valid then it gives proper output in any case or otherwise it shows error message.

Round 3: First Technical Interview
All those who had cleared group interview were called for first technical interview. They were taking minimum 2 hours for first interview. Some of us also faced interview for 3 or more hours.

Round 4: Second Technical Interview
All those who had cleared first technical interview were called for second interview. This was last round of interview. They took 1½ to 2 hours for this second interview.

I don,t remember all the questions which were asked to me in both interviews. But still some of the questions which I can remember (almost 80 to 90% questions) are listed below.

In both interview they ask questions from C/C++, java, OS, Data structure and algorithms, Microprocessors and compiler constructions. With this, they also asked me to develop more than 6 to 8 programs. You can develop all programs in 5 to 7 minutes. But after writing program they asked to find its complexity and try to reduce the complexity and write the program again. In this way it took almost 15 to 20 min for each program. Some took less than 15 minutes also.

Some of the interview questions are as follows:

1. You are given a linked list and block size k. Reverse block of size k from list.

   For example you are given linked list of 1000 nodes and block size is 5 then instead of reversing whole list, reverse first 5 elements, then 6 to 10 elements, then 11 to 15 elements, and so on...You have singly linked list and your algorithm which you will implement must be in space, that is no extra space is allowed.

2. You are given a tree and any 2 nodes of that tree. Find common parent of both nodes. Develop as much efficient program as you can.

3. In unix there is a command called “tail”. Implement that command in C.

4. Some questions about race condition (OS)

5. Questions related to semaphores.

6. Questions related to mutex. Applications of mutex. How to implement mutex in OS?

7. Questions about Critical region (OS).

8. How to ensure that race condition doesn,t occur. Give your view as you are OS designer.

9. How to ensure that each process lock the critical region before they enter in it. As OS designer How will you force the process to do this?

10. Questions on IPC

11. Questions on Shared memory and Message passing mechanism.

12. Difference between system call and API call

13. How system call works? What happens when system call is invoked?

14. Different types of system calls?

15. Some questions from microprocessor. About Interrupts

16. Types of Interrupts. What happened when interrupt is called?

17. You are given a hard copy of a program which contains some errors. Your job is to find all types of errors from it. And discuss why is it an error. Write correct program for the same.

18. You are given a linked list and a number n. You also have a function to delete all nodes from that list which are at position which multiple of n in the list.

    Example: if number is 3 then delete 3rd, 6th, 9th ,...nodes form the list. Develop a program that tests whether given function works properly or not. (In short they are asking me to develop general program for all test cases. By running that program all tests can be performed.)

19. Questions on java. Exception handling

20. Need of catch and finally block in java exception handling..

21. How will you create your own exception.. Explain with example.

22. Some questions on compiler construction. What is parser? What is input to the parser and what is output of parser? Difference between top down and bottom up parser.

23. F(1) = 1.

    F(2n) = F (n) and F(2n+1) = F(n) + F(n+1).
    Develop recursive program.

24. You are given a string which contains some special characters. You also have set of special characters. You are given other string (call it as pattern string). Your job is to write a program to replace each special characters in given string by pattern string. You are not allowed to create new resulting string. You need to allocate some new memory to given existing string but constraint is you can only allocate memory one time. Allocate memory exactly what you need not more not less.

25. Assume that your friend is writing a book . He gives you a file that contains that book. Your job is to develop an algorithm for indexing of that book. In every book there is one index at end which contains some words which are not there in normal vocabulary dictionary. It also contains page number for reference. You can use any data structure you want. You need to justify why you have used that data structure and also need to justify your logic.

26. Question from my B.E. final semester project. Asked me to explain whole project.

27. Question from everything written on my resume.

28. Question from my every project I did. They asked me to explain each project and then how to do some modification? That modification will be suggested by interviewer himself.

29. My experience in Teaching assistantship.

30. They had my written test answer sheet. They opened it and asked me to explain why I gave that output or why I implement that logic. How did I arrive to that solution which I had written in answer sheet.

31. In written test, for second question I had implement a program which was not much efficient. During interview they ask me to optimize my program. They also gave hint to optimize it.

32. During group interview, in second problem I was only able to discuss logic I was unable to develop program in given time limit. Interviewer knew this. She asked me to develop that program during interview.

33. Which is your favorite software tool? If you are allowed to add any feature in it which feature you will add?

34. Which is your favorite subject? Some questions from that subject.

35. Something about yourself , your hobbies, interests, strengths and weakness.

 

MICROSOFT PAPER ON 29th JANUARY

1) Coldest planet:Pluto
2) INS Shivali is the first:
3) Which one of the following was NOT indegineously developed?:Prithvi/Akash/Agni
4) Full form of SARS
5) Anthrax is a :Virus/Bacteria/.../...
6) Dakshina Gangothri is:Ganga,s origin/Indian camp @ antartica/.../...
7) Which of the following is a chemical weapon:Mustard Gas/Marsh Gas/.../...
8) A question based on Coding and Decoding
9) Another question similar to above
10) Question on series completion
11) Another series completion question
12) Where is Institute of Forensic Science?:Hyderabad
13)A G.K question based on chromosomes in males and females
Sample technical questions asked in test last year in CSE :
1) Banker,s algorithm is used for: Deadlock Avoidance
2) A LOT of questions were based on generating strings from a given grammar. 
3) A circle(dot) shown in the PCB is:Vcc/Grnd/Pin 1/Pin 14
4) Program Segment Prefix in MS-DOS 5.0 is:
5) Some IP addresses were given and the question was to select the private addess from it(?)
6) 10Base2 and 10Base5 wires refers to:
7) A question on sliding-window protocol
8) Which of the following require a driver?:disk/cache/ram/cpu
9) A LOT of mathematical questions which were asked from calculus,trigonometry...

The questions asked in ECE were mainly from Control Systems, Communications EMT and microprocessor
Make sure that u know the fundas of microprocessors useful in interview also: see if u know these questions
1. Which type of architecture 8085 has? 
2. How many memory locations can be addressed by a microprocessor with 14 address lines? 
3. 8085 is how many bit microprocessor? 
4. Why is data bus bi-directional? 
5. What is the function of accumulator? 
6. What is flag, bus? 
7. What are tri-state devices and why they are essential in a bus oriented system? 
8. Why are program counter and stack pointer 16-bit registers? 
9. What does it mean by embedded system? 
10. What are the different addressing modes in 8085? 
11.What is the difference between MOV and MVI? 
12. What are the functions of RIM, SIM, IN? 
13. What is the immediate addressing mode? 
14. What are the different flags in 8085? 
15. What happens during DMA transfer? 
16. What do you mean by wait state? What is its need? 
17. What is PSW? 
18. What is ALE? Explain the functions of ALE in 8085. 
19. What is a program counter? What is its use? 
20. What is an interrupt? 
21.Which line will be activated when an output device require attention fromCPU?                                                                                          

Then comes the interview questions asked in ECE interview were fundamental.Qustions asked in my interview were:
Director
1. Which college and university are you coming from?
2. Did you appear for GATE? Why are you not interested in higher studies?
3. Did you appear for IES?
4. Did you appear for any other board interview of public sector?
5. The subjects you have learned in college can be divided into three- basic electronics, communi-cation and digital logic. Tell me any five subjects you like.
(I told radar and navigational aids, electronic warfare, satellite communication, biomedical instrumentation, fuzzy electronics and basic digital electronics as my subjects)
Board member1 (QUESTION LEVEL- MODERATE)                
1. Write the truth table for full adder and implement it in NAND gate only.
2. What,s the difference between looping 0s and 1s in K map?
3. Difference between microprocessor and micro controller
4. Microprocessors you are familiar with
5. How will you send and receive data to a micro-processor? (One method is I/O mapped I/O which is the other one?)
6. Radar range equation?
7. Does the radar range depend upon the frequency of the signal transmitted?
8. What is Doppler shift? What is its importance?
BOARD MEMBER -2 QUESTION LEVEL- TOUGH) 
1. I will make two fuzzy statements. Pencil is long. Table is long. What is the term long signify?
2. What is a membership function?
3. What are the design criteria for very low frequency amplifier?
4. Can you measure distance with the help of CW radar? If so how?
5. How will you design a stable oscillator? (Not with crystal oscillator because temperature affects it)
6. You have designed an amplifier. After few days it is found that its gain have changed. What might be the reason?                  
BOARD MEMBER-3 (QUESTION LEVEL- MODERATE) 
1. A plane is moving in a circular path around the transmitter of the radar. Will there be Doppler shift detected in the radar?
2. State Keplers laws
3. Why there is more geo synchronous satellite?
4. The angular difference between two satellites is 2 degree. What is the maximum number of satellites needed to cover the whole earth?
5. What is the minimum number of satellites needed to cover the whole earth?
BOARD MEMBER-4 QUESTION LEVEL- MODERATE) 
1. Which is the law of conservation involved in the second of Keplers?
2. Why do you explain elliptical orbit while stating Kepler,s law? Why not circular orbit?
3. What are the advantages of optical communication?
4. What are the invasive and non-invasive methods of instrumentation?

For CS guys they started with this question: What is a key board? Where u will connec? What will happen if you press the keys?..
For maths guys they asked some questions on series.. I don,t know muchSome guys were selected just by describing the final year project.    
                                                                                                  
1. How can you design a phase detector using a XOR gate? 
2. Questions abt differentiator and integrator. What will happen if we increase/decrease the values of R/C? 
3. how will a low/high pass filters behave to different signals –ramp, pulse etc 
4. questions on flip flops 
5. Johnson counter 
6. Questions on microprocessors- what is SIM? 
7. Abt your project. What will happen when this/that happens to your project? 
8. Radar, antenna and satellite communication. 
9. Which is the first/latest communication satellite? 
10. What is apogee /perigee?