I applied online. The process took 1 week. I interviewed at Microsoft in Apr 2021
Interview
I applied for this position at Microsoft, and later received an email from a recruiter that asked me to fill out a form for them. The form was clearly made for recruiters, not for recruitees, to see, as it contained information such as "Ask them this" or "ask them if they have done that". It seemed that the recruiter had to schedule a call to ask me those questions, but instead they found it OK to simply send me the form and let me fill it myself...
Alright, I did that and they responded me a few days later asking for a suitable time for an interview. We choose a suitable time for both and scheduled the interview. However, on the scheduled time, I had an unexpected issue that prevented me from going. I sent an email to the recruiter telling them that. I did not receive any email from the recruiter after this, ever, even after trying to contact them multiple times.
I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Microsoft (Bellevue, WA) in Jun 2021
Interview
Initial Teams video pre-screen "whiteboarding" a theoretical design followed by a 6-hour interview circuit with 4 1-hour interview sessions taking place on a single day. Each interviewer decides whether you're writing code or whiteboarding the solution (sometimes they give you the flexibility to pick which). Two were clear with requirements and I thought very helpful with their hints, while the other two did not present in a clear way. As always, if I had seen the particular leetcode questions ahead of the interview I'd have done much better (partially because I wouldn't need to rely on the interviewers to clarify reqs, etc.). They were all what I would classify as "leetcode medium" questions.
I feel that doing these interviews with MSFT and AMZN and others is a decent way to prepare as I haven't really seen technical interviews that were harder than those from MSFT and AMZN, however you really have to grind for several months (after work) or a few weeks (not holding down a full time job) at least to clear enough of these potential leetcode problems to where you will have seen (ideally) all of them already when you get into the interview. That's always been my gripe with these intervews- anyone who passes them has probably completed the same basic problem on HackerRank and it's not "really" a test of coding ability so much as it's a test of memory.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Each interviewer is supposed to cover one or two of Microsoft's core values- they ask a question to give you the opportunity to describe something about your work history that demonstrates the core value/core values. In practice only around half asked these kinds of non-technical questions.
I applied online. I interviewed at Microsoft (Tel Aviv-Yafo) in May 2021
Interview
Started with a 30 min phone call from hiring manager.
Then first technical interview,
after that home assignment that sould be delivered in 48 hours.
Then second interview to go over the home assignment.
Then a technical interview with team leader.
And the last one was AA interview with manager from other group in Microsoft.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Describe the system architecture of your current company.