Developer 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.
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I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Microsoft (Oslo) in Nov 2018
Interview
There was a technical Skype interview followed by a series of interviews on-site. These interviews were for an entry-level university full-time position for the Oslo office in Norway.
The phone interview was straight-forward, with a palindrome programming question, followed by some questions of general computer science topics (complexity, memory, etc.) in addition to some specific questions regarding my area of expertise.
Within a couple of days, I received an email with the details on how to book a flight to their office for an on-site interview.
The on-site interview was a little bit more thorough; each candidate underwent 3-4 interviews in a row, rotating interviewers every 45 minutes with a 5-minute break in between. Each interviewer started by asking some general, open-ended questions - not necessarily relating to programming. They told me that the interview process had recently been changed across Microsoft and that these open-ended questions were asked to gauge how the candidates think. The first two interviewers then asked some programming related questions (write a linked list in C, how does memory and resource management differ from C and garbage collected languages,) along with some discussion. Note that we were asked to program on a white board. The third interview asked a different and unexpected question about building a library (not the programming variant) that can support millions of users; what factors should you consider when building such a library (e.g. how to organize the books, how tall should the shelfs be, etc)? Note also that each interview ended by asking if I had any questions, so it would be wise not to ask every question to the first interviewer.
Interview questions [4]
Question 1
Write a program that checks if a string is a palindrome. What's its complexity?
How would you build/design a library (not the programming type) that can handle a million users, containing every book from 1970 and which will also support books 30 years in the future from now?
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 days. I interviewed at Microsoft (Mountain View, CA)
Interview
Ending up going back and forth with recruiter multiple times to find the best team that I can apply. Was supposed to get a interview with that team, though never got a call. Finally got a response after 1-2 months, but had already committed to another job by then.
I applied through an employee referral. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Microsoft (Monterrey, Nuevo León) in Oct 2018
Interview
I applied through a referral in the fall, process took 1+ month. Had some phone interviews and 4 on site on one day. Each interview lasted 45min. In each one they would ask some behavioral questions using my resume.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Some questions about string and array manipulation.