I applied through an employee referral. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Microsoft in Jan 2016
Interview
There was one phone interview for around 30 mins with a recruiter. I did not realize that Microsoft allows their recruiters to do the technical phone screen.
I had mostly resume based questions for a major part of the interview.
One technical question was to explain recursion.
When there was just 5 mins to go, the recruiter asked me a puzzle. Very pedantic one at that. While I was majorly prepared for algorithms and data structures I did not bother to go through the usual brain teasers that Microsoft once was infamous in asking
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Given two jugs which can hold 5 quarts and 3 quarts of water.. measure 4 quarts.. pretty standard puzzle.
The first round was a phone screen round (mostly behavioral). It was a 30 minute phone interview and I had an overall positive experience. Few questions were based on my course knowledge though fairly straightforward.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Most of them were behavioral questions and a few technical ones based on systems design and my resume
I applied online. I interviewed at Microsoft (Redmond, WA) in Oct 2019
Interview
They flew me out to Redmond to interview, and set up everything up to work really smoothly. Had a great time interviewing with two interviewers back to back, and had time to explore the campus and Seattle afterwards.
The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Microsoft
Interview
Day long interview with 3 interviews from engineers. Some may be technical. It was fun. Seattle is a cool City to explore. The engineers we're very friendly and food was prepared for the interviewers.
Software Development 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 58% positive. To compare, the company-average is 66.4% positive. This is according to Glassdoor user ratings.
Candidates applying for Software Development roles take an average of 20 days to get hired, when considering 40 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 Development according to 40 Glassdoor interviews include:
One on one interview: 45%
Skills test: 23%
Phone interview: 11%
Personality test: 6%
Presentation: 6%
IQ intelligence test: 5%
Background check: 2%
Drug test: 2%
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