Software Engineer applicants have rated the interview process at Microsoft with 4 out of 5 (where 5 is the highest level of difficulty) and assessed their interview experience as 50% positive. To compare, the company-average is 68.2% positive. This is according to Glassdoor user ratings.
Here are the most commonly searched roles for interview reports -
I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Microsoft
Interview
I applied for a job on the Microsoft careers site for a job in the Microsoft New York office (I need to stay in New York), and they gave me a programming test to do. After taking the programming test, I got contacted for an in person interview in Redmond, not in New York. After thanking them and explaining that I can't relocate, they contacted me again for a phone interview for a job in Washington DC. After explaining again that I'm not able to relocate and that the job I was applying for is in the New York office, they told me someone else would contact me. Then, I got another message stating that I should have applied for a job in New York if I was unable to relocate, which is what I did in the first place. Microsoft's HR department is pretty disorganized.
I applied through college or university. I interviewed at Microsoft (Chicago, IL) in Nov 2015
Interview
I had a thirty min telephonic interview and the questions were based on both technical and managerial.
The recruiter was very friendly and gave hints and explained the questions very clearly and clarified all the doubts as well. I was able to answer all the questions to the knowledge I posessed.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Technical Questions:
- Explain the logic to reverse a string
- How can you modify the code by removing the duplicate elements.
- what data structure can be used for the above logic and how it can be implemented.
Managerial Questions :
- If you are a team lead how could you manage a team of 5 where 2 are beginners, 2 are at moderate level and 1 is a expert without effecting the team performance.
- How can you figure out that a person in your team is stressed and how do you help him that will not impact the performance or not cause any delay??
I applied through college or university. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Microsoft (Redmond, WA) in Dec 2015
Interview
Had an interview on my school campus and made it to the final round of interviews on Microsoft's campus. You sit in a room with about 20 other candidates and do about 5 interviews with different interviewers. After your interviews you get free lunch, free sweatshirts, free taxi vouchers.
Questions weren't too hard and I thought I did really well, but apparently I didn't stick out enough of the hundreds of people they were interviewing that day.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Reverse a string. Write an algorithm to figure out who the winner of a tic-tac-toe board was. Addition using linked lists (each node holds one digit).