After my graduation, I posted my Resume at Microsoft's global career website, HR contacted and scheduled phone screen that was an hour long, I was invited for onsite interview full loop, the onsite loop involved first some information exchange with HR person, then I was approached by would be manager, he welcomed at the reception and sent over to another member on the team to be interviewed, I had 3 interviews back to back and one of them has been a lunch interview, then I met the would be manager (a test lead) again for the fourth interview, all first four interviews were whiteboard sessions, and we also chatted on my resume, past experience, general questions like where do see yourself in five years from now, etc etc. All the programming questions were on data structures and algorithms and core CS concepts. My fifth interview was with hiring manager (a Test manager), he also sent me to board for another whiteboard session, then asked me various test questions, like give test cases for testing the keyboard, coffee mug, MS Paint, then he started over resume and asked me questions on my research assistantship experience and projects that I completed there. All the interviewers were very respectful, between each interview they asked me if I cared for a drink. It ended up very happy and memorable experience, I was offered the job!
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Should we ship the product that has known bugs and issues?
Initial screening was done by an external company. They were polite but seemed to follow a script. They possibly did not understand the technical questions. In the end, I am not sure if the answer given was wrong or just did not meet their scripted answer.
I applied through college or university. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Microsoft (Bellevue, WA) in Oct 2012
Interview
I was being interviewed for a summer internship with this title, they flew me up to Washington for an in-person group interview after a screening interview at my college (which I got through handing a resume to a recruiter through the career fair). This screening interview was fairly simple, one technical question, some questions about what I'd like to work on, etc. Everything is paid for when you're up their, car, hotel, and food.
In person interview was a 5 rounds that either lasted throughout the morning or afternoon (there were two groups of interviewees from colleges across the country) and you spend about an hour with each person, and by the end they tell you on the spot if you've passed or failed.
Each interview asks some type of technical question where you solve an algorithm, everyone asks for a self evaluation on how you think you're doing at this stage in the interview.
Office where I interviewed was fairly interesting, one section had meeting rooms that all referenced video games from Halo to Half Life, there was also one of those Microsoft tablet tables with games on it, as well as an Xbox 360 running Halo. They serve some food, but it's not worth remembering, and there's breaks in-between interviews where they very much discourage you from discussing any of the questions being asked.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Nothing too difficult about the technical questions, I came from a public school in CA near the start of my JR year, and by the end of the year every type of question that was asked was covered in class. They don't look for the absolute best answer, as long as it's not overly complicated.