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.
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I applied through college or university. The process took 1 week. I interviewed at Microsoft in Oct 2016
Interview
Applied through a connection. Microsoft then came to my school and held interviews.
My interviewer was very cold, apathetic, and unhappy. She blazed through the behavioral portion of the interview and didn't really care much for what I had to say. She also only allowed me to ask ONE question at the end of the interview, despite not being short on time. She didn't even greet me with a smile as interviewers tend to do.
Personality aside, she asked me to "implement a queue with a stack interface," but she did not want me to use extra memory. I told her it wasn't possible, but she told me that a stack is just an array, and revealed that she wanted me to reverse the stack in place. This is a violation of the stack abstraction, so I was very unsure if she actually wanted me to do as she said.
In the end I didn't get an offer. She was one of the most unpleasant human beings I've ever encountered. She also was very unclear with what she expected out of me. I don't know why they would send her from Seattle to the east coast to interview when she clearly did not enjoy human interaction.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Implement a queue with a single stack, no extra memory
I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at Microsoft
Interview
The interview rep was very nice, and gave me honest feedback which I appreciated. It was a one on one experience, and lasted about 30 minutes. He asked me several questions about UX design and programming concepts since on my resume I listed that I was highly interested in UX design.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
How would you begin the process of designing a mobile app?
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Microsoft (Toronto, ON) in Sep 2016
Interview
Applied through career fair and gave my resume. They sent an email about a week later asking to confirm a date and time for an interview on-campus. Average difficulty interview. Just one technical question and discussed about previous internship experience. 30 minutes only.