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.
Here are the most commonly searched roles for interview reports -
I applied through an employee referral. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Microsoft in Nov 2012
Interview
HR called me. Since I was local, instead of phone screen, she arranged me to come on site. Talked to 2 hiring group leads. One proceeded for a real onsite interview.
The onsite interview took almost 2 weeks to schedule (by someone else). I was supposed to meet 3 people. The person I was supposed to meet at the reception desk didn't come. I talked the 2 who came to meet me. Both super nice. We talked for ~15 minutes, then I was given a problem to think about. An hour later, two of them came and asked if I had any questions. After lunch, discussed my solution/ideas with them separately. They both seemed like my ideas (two of which they haven't thought of). Seems all went exceedingly well so far. Then 3 1-1 interview with white board coding. I didn't do well on any of them. 2 weeks later, after I contacted the HR, and was given a schedule when I could talk to her. She told me NO.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
1) An 2 dimensional image. Transpose each bit (i.e. swap X-Y in bits), and repackage them into bytes for storage.
2) A scrapbook scenario with linked image and text.
3) inorder binary tree traversal
I interviewed at Microsoft (Hyderabad) in Nov 2008
Interview
2 rounds of telephonic interviews. Mainly concentrated on problem solving and programming ability. They called to campus after 4 weeks. Nearly 5 rounds of interviews with different senior people focusing on designing and architecture.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Design a search engine that can perform better than Google.