I applied through college or university. The process took 6 weeks. I interviewed at Microsoft (Redmond, WA) in Dec 2015
Interview
Handed my resume to a recruiter back at my school's career fair, then later that day got an email asking for me to setup an on-campus interview with them. The on-campus interview was pretty much just a screening to make preliminary cuts. The interviewer asked me a couple questions about my resume then we went straight to a technical question which was pretty easy. About 2-3 weeks later I got an email saying that I made it on to the final round at Microsoft's campus. There I had 3 one-hour interviews as well as a two hour interview that doubled as both a technical interview as well as a lunch interview. Everyone I interviewed with was super nice, and the questions weren't too hard, but the complexity of algorithms were pretty important (Big O time). The day after my interviews at Microsoft, I received another email congratulating me on receiving an offer from the group I interviewed with.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Given an integer array, where over half the values in the array are the same value, return that value in O(N) time.
It was a nice experience, I was asked about my CV, hobbies, projects (how I collaborated with my colleagues) and I had an algorithmic problem, some OOP and system design.
Initial Screening: This might involve a phone call or an initial video interview with a recruiter or HR representative. The purpose of this stage is to briefly discuss your background, skills, and interest in the position, and to determine if you meet the basic qualifications for the role.
Technical Assessment: Depending on the role, you may be asked to complete a technical assessment or coding challenge. This could be done remotely or on-site and is designed to evaluate your technical skills and problem-solving abilities. For software engineering roles, this might involve writing code to solve algorithmic problems or completing a coding project.
Video interviews. Met multiple interesting people in the team. Asked about experience and background. Good process overall. Would have liked to have joined the company but it didn't work out.
Software Engineering applicants have rated the interview process at Microsoft with 3 out of 5 (where 5 is the highest level of difficulty) and assessed their interview experience as 67% positive. To compare, the company-average is 66.4% positive. This is according to Glassdoor user ratings.
Candidates applying for Software Engineering roles take an average of 33 days to get hired, when considering 54 user submitted interviews for this role. To compare, the hiring process at Microsoft overall takes an average of 30 days.
Common stages of the interview process at Microsoft as a Software Engineering according to 54 Glassdoor interviews include:
One on one interview: 36%
Skills test: 19%
Phone interview: 17%
Personality test: 8%
Presentation: 7%
Drug test: 4%
Background check: 3%
Group panel interview: 2%
IQ intelligence test: 2%
Other: 2%
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