Software 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 through a staffing agency. The process took 3 days. I interviewed at Microsoft (Seattle, WA) in Apr 2014
Interview
They pay for your travel/stay at Seattle WA, 5 rounds of interviews, very tough and long. The Microsoft staffer talked to me first on the phone, about my projects, goals, Microsoft, the Live Search team, and how interested I was. He then setup a phone screen with the development lead of the team I was interviewing for, which was to take place about a week later. This phone call was postponed because of a meeting at Microsoft, and I actually did it a few days later than planned.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Given a set of 21 tasks = {A, B,....Z} except I, O, U, X and Q. Each task requires 4 hours of processing. Except for tasks E, Y, P, R, W that require 8 hours of processing.
You have 3 machines to process these tasks = T1, T2, T3. T1 and T2 are available everyday for 8 hours. T3 is available only on Mon, Wed and Fri for 8 hours.
You are given 3 lists that indicate the dependency list among the tasks.
L1 = A->R->K->M (eg A can be completed if R is completed, R can be completed only if K is completed etc.)
L2 = N->G->V->E->Z->H
L3 = C->F->Y->D->J->P->T->S->W->B->C (cycle)
I applied through college or university. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Microsoft (Redmond, WA) in Feb 2014
Interview
Got contacted by a recruiting firm, asked for a phone interview the following week (I really should have declined and tried a bit later, as I was really not prepared).
Got a Skype interview.
Questions were simple though I completely messed up one of them, which meant I didn't get to go forward (and, in case you were wondering you can only apply again in 6-9 months, which I looked everywhere to find out before I actually accepted the interview, but couldn't find).