I applied through a recruiter. The process took 4 days. I interviewed at Microsoft (Redmond, WA) in Mar 2015
Interview
There were two stages: rounds 1 and 2. The first round is done on the university campus, where they get to know you and assess your skills. I applied after a coding competition held on campus. This interview involved one technical question and some questions about my history. The interviewer simply wanted me to gush about who I am and what I'm proud of.
Round 2 was a very different experience. This round they bring you to the Redmond campus for a set of interviews, I was flown out from Ottawa. There will be 3-5 interviews, depending on constraints. The interviewers all ask at least 1 technical question, and generally these questions cover your entire skillset. It's difficult if you're nervous, but if you go in with a good mood and no expectations you can get through fine.
Interview questions [4]
Question 1
Design a function that takes in 2 strings representing numbers and adds them together as if they are numbers, and outputs the result as a string. You cannot assume the number is any containable size (i.e. the value represented could be larger than long long long long etc.).
I applied through college or university. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Microsoft (Bellevue, WA) in Feb 2015
Interview
The onsite interview started at 8am. They had a hotel at the shuttle to pick a group of us up at 7. You will be interviewing for the same position with a group of other people, though the actual interview portions are 1 on 1. It's 4 interviews and then lunch. They questions alternated between the interviewer seeming to think I was completely incompetent basic programming questions and normal fairly difficult technical interview questions. There is a good amount of emphasis on your past experience, and a decent amount of the harder problems only required pseudocode. It is 8am, and there are only minimal breaks between interviews, during which you sit in the lobby chatting with your fellow interviewees/competition. There's some food there, as well as coffee, but be prepared to not have much time to eat or mentally refresh between interviews.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Given a limited amount of information, design all the classes (just prototypes, no implementation) of how you would implement this system.
I applied online. The process took 3 months. I interviewed at Microsoft (Dubai) in Nov 2013
Interview
A screening interview first then the on-site interview with 3 developers. Interviewers were not really helpful and I couldn't understand their real questions. It would be nice if they have given some food since I was there for 5 hours and eventually I got hungry. It would also be nice if they have given the feedback from the interviewers.
Interview questions [3]
Question 1
Given 2 nodes in a n-ary tree find the common ancestors.