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 online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Microsoft (Seattle, WA) in Mar 2015
Interview
Got a phone interview 1 week after submitting my resume. It was not going too well since I had a hard time answering on technical questions, but since I told about my own projects in my free-time it turned out to be worth the final-round interviews on-site. They even paid for the flight and hotel.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
What is the difference between a thread and a process? (Operating systems question)
I applied through an employee referral. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Microsoft (Redmond, WA) in Jun 2014
Interview
Got the phone interview opportunity from employee referral. One round phone interview, asked about past projects, some behavioral questions, and several basic data structure questions including hashmap, binary search tree. One coding question which was easy.
Interview questions [2]
Question 1
Inorder predecessor for a given key in binary search tree (BTS).
I applied through college or university. I interviewed at Microsoft (Sídney) in Jan 2014
Interview
Phone interview followed by in person interviews, there can be up to four interviews each with different goals, each interview was technical. You will not necessarily get all four interviews.
One interview was had a design question, two had algorithms questions and one had an implementation question. Between the interviews you are sat with a recruiter in a room with the other potential candidates. The recruiter talked about Seattle, Microsoft.