I applied through a recruiter. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Microsoft (San Francisco, CA) in Oct 2019
Interview
The recruiter reached out to me and I scheduled a phone screen. The technical phone round was not great. I struggled to come up with a clean solution. The next day the recruiter emailed me and said that there is another team who is interested in my profile and then scheduled another technical phone round with them. This round was not good too. I did not come up with the solution I was asked. Through this whole process, the Interviewers and recruiters were very friendly and helpful. A week later the recruiter called me and said that my performance was not up to the mark and told me to contact her after 3 months after preparing some more. I was never this happy being rejected in any other interview. They really cared about the candidate and my whole experience was really good. I really think Microsoft is doing a great job making sure that the candidates don't have a negative experience. I hope one day I get to work for this awesome company.
I applied in-person. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Microsoft (Redmond, WA) in Oct 2019
Interview
Recruiter contacts me around mid Sep, then having 5 round onsite plus additional General Hiring Manager interview a week ago, then ... Recruiter disappear without giving me any update. I'll treat it as rejection and move on
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Microsoft (Redmond, WA) in May 2019
Interview
It was about what I was expecting for the interview process. Microsoft scheduled five interview blocks at their campus, with the fifth being As Appropriate. Each interviewer was primarily interested in evaluating how I thought through the problem as much as the answer I arrived at. There was plenty on conversation working through problems and white boarding the solutions as well. Overall, it was much more enjoyable than I thought it would have been.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Design a shopping cart. Defend your decisions. Additionally, string compression algorithm, design a system to scale to 10,000 users, word reverse with preserved white space.