I applied through college or university. The process took 5 weeks. I interviewed at Microsoft in Oct 2017
Interview
Recruiter contacted me via phone call after graduation
Microsoft flew me for an on-site interview 1 month after phone interview, and everything was paid for. Had 4 rounds of interviews during on-site day
Asked me to draw out the end-to-end architecture of a gaming project I worked on sited on my resume (make sure you can speak on every single thing you put on your resume with confidence)
You have 9 balls, equally big, equally heavy - except for one, which is a little heavier.
How would you identify the heavier ball if you could use a pair of balance scales only twice?
The famous hat guessing problem
Players are put a hat on top of their head, which can be black or green. Each player is standing on a step on a staircase and can guess their own hat colour (black or green) or pass. Each player can only see the hat of the person in front of them, but not theirs. This means that each call can only depend on the other prisoners' hat colours. However, before the distributing of hats begins, the players are told the rules and can agree on a strategy. The players get a point if the hat color they guess happens to be the color of the hat on their head. Which strategy should the players use so that the winning probability becomes maximal?
The interview process was very long and disorganized. It took so long for them to get back to me, and they didn’t respect my time. The entire process took over 6 months and I was exhausted from emailing the recruiter to know what the next step easy. Communication was very poor too.
There was one in person interview on my college campus, and then the flew me onsite (Redmond Washington).
Onsite, you are guaranteed 2 interviews, the rest depend on how well you do in the previous interview. Each interview lasts 60-90 minutes, and are with different people on the team.