I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Microsoft (New York, NY) in Jan 2016
Interview
I Submit the application directly online on the company's website. 2 weeks later receive the phone interview. The interview lasted for one hour approximately and is mainly technical. Some questions includes OOP concepts and brain teasers. Such as the 4 feathers, and how do you explain the recursion to a 12 year old child.
I applied through college or university. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at Microsoft (Monterrey, Nuevo León)
Interview
First I gave them my CV and got an answer after a week, asking me for a 1 hour phone interview in 2 weeks. I waited 2 weeks after the phone interview to get an answer asking me to assist to the final round, a face to face interview day (consisting of 4 interviews) in Monterrey, Mexico. I got the results in place one hour after the 4 interviews.
Microsoft is very well organized in their interviews and recruiters share all the information they have about you so you don't have to repeat any information. They always expect you to ask for feedback at the end of each interview and they even give you some training before the final round.
I practiced with 10+ exercises and questions that I found in Glassdoor and read the whole "Programming Interviews Exposed" book before the final round. It is very recommended if you are a student or looking for an entry level position.
I did not share all the questions that I had or the answers to them for privacy reasons.
Interview questions [4]
Question 1
You have one balance tab and 9 marbles. One of the marbles is heavier that the other 8 (which have the same weight). Having only two chances to use the balance tab, find the heaviest one.
You have one string of text and words inside are separated by a space character as usual. Given M amount and a string, return how many groups of M contiguous words can be created. For example if string was "Hello world of the United States of America" and M was 3, these would be the possible groups:
"hello world of"
"world of the"
"of the united"
"the united states"
"united states of"
"states of america"
And the only output of the algorithm would be 6.
I applied online. The process took 5 days. I interviewed at Microsoft (Oslo) in Nov 2015
Interview
I only reached the first stage of the interview process. I was interviewed at Microsoft's office with a guy from their Xbox department in US. He did not focus on any resume or grade transcripts, and the interview was formed more like a technical interview, focusing on the interview subject's understanding of the field and technical abilities.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
What's your favorite data structure, and then a follow up question to that.