Hi guys, this is Binay Shaw, and in this post, I’m gonna share my entire journey of Microsoft Engage 2022 (2nd Year) Verdict: Not shortlisted (After Technical Interview) Reason: The role closed on 11th Aug, 22.

What to expect in this post?

1. Honest experience (many people on the internet shared the wrong info)
2. Image references
3. Exact dates
4. Resources to prepare for both OA and Technical Rounds

Remember, Luck is a factor too!

Content:

1. Registration
2. OA Rounds + Resources
3. Made it to Microsoft Engage Intern Mentee ’22
4. Project Design and Development
5. Results (and why it was Trending on Twitter and LinkedIn?)
6. Interview preparation + Resources
7. Tech Interview Experience
8. Rejection
9. Conclusion
10. What’s next?

1. Registration:

There is no exact date but the registration starts in the month of April, you can subscribe to Arsh Goyal, Kushal Vijay, and other YouTubers or people on LinkedIn who share these pieces of information. I’ve attached some reference Images. And the shortlisting criteria were based on Resumes, referrals are not applicable for Microsoft Engage. I registered in the month of April (Mid) and received the mail from ‘India University Recruiting’ that I am shortlisted for two challenges, basically, they’re OA rounds.

Build your resume: flowcv.io

2. OA Rounds and Resources:

The exact dates of the OA rounds were already mentioned. I got shortlisted for the OA challenges along with 2 friends who got the same mail. We went through the previous year's QNAs and experience but that was not that helpful, but thankfully few YouTubers shared a couple of resources to prepare for it. Those were MCQ-type questions on CS Core and DSA.

I along with one of my friends got shortlisted for the 2nd Round of the OA Challenge, but unfortunately, the other one was not as lucky as us. (Luck is a factor) He said he solved all the questions correctly except one which was wrong unlike us. We solved it all on time and made it to the 2nd Round of OA.

The 2nd Round of OA was scheduled just the very next day. As we were following YouTube channels like Arsh Goyal, Kushal Vijay, Khushboo Goel and etc, we were aware of the upcoming challenges, also the mail stated it clearly that it would be based on puzzles.

A few days later, I got a mail about getting shortlisted for the Microsoft Engage 2022 event, but my other friend couldn’t, he submitted it 3-5 mins before submission time, he was not that lucky. (Luck is a factor) Around 3000 candidates were shortlisted for this event which has no restrictions on College Tier, unlike last year's criteria which, I don’t remember the exact number.

Resources to prepare:

1. San Foundry
2. Interviewbit
3. Geeks for Geeks
4. Letsfindcourse
5. Tutorialspoint
6. Java Point
7. Note: Prepare topic-wise MCQs as well. Very Important!!

For more resources, please refer to GFG, Interview bit, and San foundry website for CS Core and DSA topics for MCQs.

3. Made it to Microsoft Engage Intern Mentee

Verdict: I got shortlisted for Microsoft Intern Engage 2022 program I received this mail on 2nd May at 5 PM.

We were supposed to get our mentors assigned soon but it took longer than we thought. My mentor contacted me through email on 10th May in the morning.

We were invited to a Kick-off event initially and AMA (Ask me anything) Sessions during the entire event.

4. Project Design and Development

These were the topics for Microsoft Engage 2022: acehacker.com/microsoft/engage2022

I chose the 1st topic, i.e., Face Recognition implemented on the Attendance app for my Microsoft Engage project.

Here’s my project:

Project Link: github.com/binayshaw7777/Microsoft-Engage-2..

I already started the ideation process in the month of Jan-Feb because I had this idea for a personal project, though I was not familiar with AI/ML because that’s not my domain, I planned to use QR Code instead with a new algorithm. Anyway, I had to redesign the entire UI for the app and plan a list of features for the app.

You may ask, “Binay how did you come up with a solution to tackle Face Recognition implementation because you don’t know that”. Well, you’re right, Thanks to GitHub repositories and Atharva Kale, he is a very wonderful guy. He helped me a lot and allowed me to use his Face Recognition project/implementation. His project was a single-screen app just to test Face Recognition that displays names after registration and with other features as well. I extracted the logic and reused it in my app, again Atharva was there to clear my doubts whenever I needed and finally, I implemented it. The MVP was ready in less than 2 weeks. Now, I had almost 2 weeks to implement other features to stand out. The entire description of the project is available on the GitHub page. I finished the app and made a video on it as we were told. The submission guide and Judging Criteria are available on the site, you may check that.

5. Results (Why it was Trending on Twitter and LinkedIn?)

We were supposed to get our results by June 10th as discussed in the AMA sessions. They sent us a mail regarding the issue, it makes sense because they had around 3000 candidates for this year so this is why it took so long. The results were finally out on 22nd June at Midnight. I lost hope to get a mail because I received mine after 15 mins, people got it around and exact at 12 AM. I got a mail that I was recommended for Interviews.

As you can see in the mail, 11th – 29th July is highlighted, I was allotted the 2nd Batch, and the 1st Batch’s Interview window was between 25th June to 13th July I guess, I’m not exactly sure.

Did anyone get Direct Internship Mail?: Yes

Did anyone get Rejection Mail?: Yes, but very few. I heard the number between 50-100.

What happened on LinkedIn and Twitter? Reason: The selection process of Microsoft was really unfair, they randomly chose candidates where the ratio of female candidates was higher than males. People who didn’t start DSA, people who cloned the entire project, people with no DSA knowledge, people who don’t have any sort of Coding profile, and people who had no domain in any development fields got Direct internships.

Does that mean I’m jealous? No, but I’m disappointed.

My action center was updated like this:

Even after getting rejection mail, it’s not yet updated. Though I received my Technical Round mail on 22nd July evening, that it is scheduled on 26th July. My recruiter contacted me the very next day confirming my availability.

6. Interview preparation + Resources

Before receiving the mail for Technical Interview, I prepared till Trees and was a little confident about DP. I started brushing up on the topics which I know and also continued Leetcode as well as GFG. Thanks to one guy who store the experiences of Interviewed candidates, that was a lifesaver for us, not gonna lie. We got ideas about the entire process and questions asked. Few were very unfortunate and unlucky, they were asked questions on Graphs, DP. Yeah, it’s okay, it comes under DSA. But wait… why did they asked System Design questions to 2nd-year Students who just finished their DSA? I mean why? They had no idea about the candidates and whom and why they were interviewing.

Anyway, I shared all the resources that I followed to prepare for my Interviews.

Resources to prepare for Microsoft Engage:

1. MS Engage Interview Questions
2. Leetcode Patterns
3. Blind 75
4. I also made a video on it: on YouTube

Here I covered all the asked topics except a few, which I’ll cover soon. Make sure to mark it star to never lose it, fork it, and clone it to practice.

7. Tech Interview Experience

After receiving the mail from my recruiter I felt quite unprepared, and yeah, that’s normal obviously.

• I prepared from the GitHub link that I shared, Leetcode Patterns and Blind 75.

• I joined 5 minutes earlier before the meeting started, the interviewer was very chill and good.

• He didn’t introduce himself, he asked for my introduction first.

• After that he asked about the project that I made for Microsoft Engage 2022, I explained him.

• The first question he asked was to find an element in a sorted matrix, it was not a normal Binary Search Question: Leetcode. I know the process because I practices in the same week but forgot the exact approach, but I started with the Edge case discussion and discussed whatever I knew. He was very supportive and dropped a lot of hints. I failed to code it out but he asked me to discuss the edge cases which I did.

• The second questions was on Tree, it was Reverse Level Order Traversal, which I had no idea, he asked me to share my approach: GFG. I knew how to traverse using BFS, so told him I will reverse the ArrayList after traversing, he was not satisfies with that approach, I offered him the Arraylist and Stack approach, and he got the idea and asked me to optimize it more, I shared his queue and stack approach where he told me where I was wrong. I took the hint and explain the final approach, he was satisfied with it.

• He then asked me for a puzzle where 8 balls with equal weights except one which is heavy are there, we had to figure out that heavy ball. GFG Little modified. I shared my approach to checking all the balls, and he asked me to look for a better approach, while I was thinking he got disconnected and came back which I started explaining, I again re-iterated my new approach, I shared Divide and Conquer approach to him, he was not satisfied and gave me some hints. Later, he shared the actual approach where I explained the process using his approach.

• He then asked me what do I know about OS and DBMS? I said no, we have it in our 3rd year. I offered him that I know OOPS concepts. He asked me about garbage collection which I answered well. He then asked me the types of Garbage Collection which I didn’t know, so I said no.

• He then asked me about Collections in Java, which I explained in detail.

• He asked me about the difference between ArrayList and LinkedList which I explained.

• He asked me, which collection framework can get me an array in the sorted sequence. I told him we can use Priority Queue, and he asked for any other data structure. I said we can use ArrayList and sort it. Does he say anything better? I had no clue so he said we can use TreeSet, which I had little idea about so I said him I don’t have any idea about it, as I never used it. He said it was okay.

• He then said, Do you have any questions? I asked 2 really important questions.

• He ended the Interview with “All the best”.

8. Rejection

It was 11th August, around 7:20 PM I received a mail where they stated the role for which you have applied is closed.

Everyone who gave their 1st or 2nd Interview or even those people whose next Interview was not even scheduled got rejected directly. I had this feeling a month ago before receiving this mail, but anyway, at least I got the opportunity to sit for a real Interview. I learned where am I lacking behind. I will work on it.

9. Conclusion

Lessons I learned:

1. I made a project on a topic that’s not my domain (Face Recognition, or AI/ML)
2. I learned more about Firebase
3. I learned how to optimize code
4. I learned to make proper documentation
5. It helped me to network with more people

The thing is nobody concluded the verdict of my Interview, so I didn’t lose. Although I was not able to grab that opportunity but here are some pictures that told me ”You Won”.

I lost a couple of more texts as I left the groups :(

Note: The majority of the Blog on the Internet and Videos on YT about MS Engage 2022 are not accurate. Let me explain to you, make sure to check the comments section too of all the videos.

NO PROJECTS WERE EVALUATED. PEOPLE WERE RANDOMLY SELECTED FOR DIRECT HIRE.

1. Watch this to get a more clear idea, though not everything is covered, hence I covered the remaining: youtube.com/watch?v=_5f8sW3xV1o
2. They don’t know what actually happened: youtube.com/watch?v=40mi-tngD58&t=384s
3. Watch from 07:04 - youtube.com/watch?v=uO4Zq6QLDIk&t=569s (It’s a lie)
4. This guy is spitting facts: youtube.com/watch?v=4XktRy_-sOc&t=812s

I lost the URL of another article on GFG that was fake, he/she shared something about the hiring part that was completely wrong. People who gave their all deserve to be there, which happened for a few of them. I’m happy for them. But, not everyone was as LUCKY as them.

Right after sending rejection mail, MS opened updated new job roles for similar stuff. The Interview process for a few was not that fair, they asked System design questions to a 2nd Year student. I’m like wow. Am I ranting? No, I want you to know what exactly happened. Ranting about the selection process won’t change the past.

Here are some links to support my statement:

1. Twitter Post 1
2. Twitter Post 2
3. Twitter Post 3
4. Twitter Post 4
5. LinkedIn post 1
6. LinkedIn post 2
7. LinkedIn post 3
8. LinkedIn post 4
9. LinkedIn post 5

10. What’s next?

I started exploring other domains like Frontend web development and more about Kotlin.

Tips to candidates that are willing to apply for Microsoft Engage 2023 and beyond:

1. Don’t be dependent on this event.
2. Ups and Downs are common, it’s just you’re lucky to face it early. It makes you stronger.
3. Practice at least 2 DSA questions. Try teaching others to get more clarity.
4. Build projects, cloning is okay but learn something out of it, don’t put that in your Resume.
5. Build your resume accordingly. You can check out my resume as well.
6. Practice, Explore, Learn.

All the best!!