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 through a staffing agency. I interviewed at Microsoft
Interview
Got an interview through a headhunter for a contract interview. They were pretty quick to respond, and overall the experience was good. I didn't get position, and I think my lack of experience had something to do with it. They wanted 3+ years of experience, and I don't quite have that.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Given a grid of letters, find every possible combination of letters and pass it to a given function that checks to see if it is a real word. You cannot repeat letters, and the letters in the word must be adjacent to each other (i.e. if you start at row 1, column 1, the only letters that can be next are (1,2), (2,1), and (2,2)).
I applied through college or university. The process took 2 days. I interviewed at Microsoft (Patiala) in Aug 2018
Interview
Online Round : 3 basic data structure questions in 75 min.
Group Flyer: 2 questions of DP and backtracking in 2 hours.
Technical Interviews : Thorough concepts of OS and data structures.
HR Round: Behavioral Questions and puzzles.
I applied through college or university. The process took 5 weeks. I interviewed at Microsoft (Redmond, WA) in Oct 2017
Interview
I was first given an on campus interview. Two weeks later, I heard back from the recruiter saying that I passed the first round, and set up the onsite interview to be a week and a half after the call. I was flown to Seattle, and did 4 back to back interviews. All of them were technical questions, and a few were very close to what you will find in Cracking the Coding Interview. I heard back a week after that I received an offer.