It was a pretty long interviewing process. It took from around march until the beginning of may.
It consisted of several parts:
1) I applied through their platform, Yello for this job. After about 2 days they answered on e-mail with an invitation for an online test.
2) The online test. Situational judgement. You were given the role of someone inside a company, there was a situation and you had to order 5 given answers from most to less likely. You have no time limit. It's pretty easy. It took about 3 more days to answer with an invitation to next phase.
3) A recorded video interview. I must say that other colleagues of mine who applied for the same job were sent directly to phase 4. The recorded video interview was not that easy. It takes some time to set up the gear you have for the interview and to test it. When you begin the interview you have a total of 8 question. The first was a "warm up" about what you like to do, the 6 questions similar to the ones in the online test only that you had to answer with your own words and what you would really do. The last one was about what technology improvements excites you the most. Nothing too technical. The hard part is that you are given 30 seconds to read the question and prepare your answer and the 2 minutes to answer. The main thing is not to get panicked, to stay calm and smile. After that it took about 1 week for them to answer and invite me to next phase. I also sent them an e-mail asking about the status of my application.
4) The Skype interview. The great thing about it is that you get schedule it when it's best for you. The Skype interview was great. The assessor was very friendly and made me feel very comfortable. It was more like a dialog which I really enjoyed. The questions are general, about you, the job and Microsoft, what expectations you have, then the last one was about new technologies (just as the one at the recorded interview). It took about 20 minutes. After a week I received the invitation to the final assessment center.
5) The assessment center. We were called at the Microsoft Office and spent a whole day there. There were 5 stages:
- a presentation (10 minutes limit - something we had to prepare at home for about 2-3 days before)
- a group exercise ( Team of 6 random people - 20 minutes time limit - given task.)
- 2 Soft Skills interviews (with 2 different assessors - Most questions are about you, how would you react in different situations. What matters the most is to be yourself and describe how would you really act. Honesty is at price here.)
- Technical interview (Here is not about how much you know, it's about how you think. You can't "prepare" for it. It only requires very basic knowledge about technology.)
I really thought that I screwed up the Assessment Center, especially the 2 soft skills interviews and the group exercise because my group was really bad but after three weeks after that I was called and informed that I was selected for the Internship. :D
