I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Microsoft in Sep 2012
Interview
The interview process was two rounds:
1.) Screen - Basic questions like why Microsoft? Describe a product you are passionate about and simple technical questions like : How to detect a palindrome
2.) Technical Screening - Very light on behavioural - why Microsoft? Which positions cought your eye? Which team would you like to join? why?
Technical:
1.) How to detect a loop in a linked list
2.) How to get all permutations of a word
3.) Probability questions
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
The most difficult question was, they gave me a puzzle and asked me to write an algorithm to solve it
I applied through college or university. I interviewed at Microsoft
Interview
I went through the initial screening process. Make sure you leave enough time to code, so try to answer non-code questions quickly. SDET expects a high level of coding fluency and accuracy.
I applied through college or university. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Microsoft (Mangaluru) in Aug 2012
Interview
There were basically three steps in hiring
1) Online Aptitude test
2) Subjective test
3) Technical Interview.
First two steps are a piece of cake. All questions in first two step are simple and with a little knowledge of Data structures anyone can answer it.
Technical interviews were a bit tricky. Compared to all other companies technical interview Microsoft is the easiest (Believe me!). They ask simple questions related to linked list, trees but are tricky. They don't concentrate much on theory questions like explain Dikjstra algorithm... One good thing about Microsoft is you are allowed to give one bad interview. So, if you screw up once, don't worry you might get another chance.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
given a linked list which has two types of pointers, a normal next pointer which points to next element in the list and random pointer which points to random element in the list. Question was to clone this linked list