I applied through a recruiter. The process took 5 weeks. I interviewed at Microsoft (Dublin, Dublin) in Feb 2012
Interview
The initial interview is a regular phone call and then the technical assessment stuff begins. A timed test (some questions to be replied in 30 mins), coding challenges (1 regular question about your expertise and 2 coding questions along with 2 testing questions all to be completed in 2 days), and a Lync call to write code on-the-fly with an experienced MS fellow, and then lastly, another couple of Lync calls to write both code and automated tests, and one call to talk to the group manager. If all goes well, one final call to interview with the director. I suggest that candidates should investigate some MS interview questions and answers which exist on the Internet.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Given the root of a binary search tree, link all the nodes at the same level, by using an additional Node* level.
The process took 2 months. I interviewed at Microsoft (Mountain View, CA) in Jan 2012
Interview
Got in contact with the campus recruiter and scheduled an interview.
On-Campus interview: 30 minutes, open-ended design question
Got in contact a week later and scheduled a meeting next month.
On campus interview, 2 90 minute interviews and a 2 hour lunch interview. Everything went well and I left Microsoft felt extremely confident I got the position, but I didnt.
Interview questions [2]
Question 1
How can you write a recursive function calculating the exponential of a number?