I applied through an employee referral. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Microsoft (Bellevue, WA) in Nov 2010
Interview
I was placed into the Employee Referral Program after being referred by a friend who works there. Two recruiters contacted me within a week to set up a telephone interview. I was then invited for an on-site interview within two weeks. The scheduling process was very disorganized and I was not informed until the day before my interview about my schedule. The on-site interview process itself was cloaked in mystery and I was not told how many interviews I would have during the day. Like I read somewhere, in spite of being interviewed by multiple people, you get to make only one first impression because the every interviewer passes on his views to the next interviewer. If your first interview goes badly, the following interviewers will have a poor impression of you even before you meet them.
The interviewers were cordial and asked mentally stimulating questions. The questions were a good mix of problem-solving and analytic thinking. Overall, I was impressed by the interviewers and enjoyed my conversations with them, but frustrated by everything else (recruiters, schedulers, etc)
I applied through an employee referral. The process took 2 days. I interviewed at Microsoft (Bellevue, WA) in Aug 2010
Interview
Two whiteboard interviews dealt with linked lists. The other was sorting. Didn't get time to ask many questions. Questions were harder than required for the position; team wasn't doing brain surgery or rocket science software. Left with a negative impression of the group.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Write a function that duplicates a singly linked list (each node also has a random reference that points to any of the other nodes).