I applied through an employee referral. The process took 2 days. I interviewed at Microsoft
Interview
Several rounds of f-2-f interview. Lot of Programming Questions - Database, Logical Qs, USB related etc. The candidate has write the solutions on White Boards. It's good to talk to folks who challenge you on the programming skills
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 3 days. I interviewed at Microsoft (Redmond, WA)
Interview
I unfortunately had very bad experience with more than one Microsoft recruiters. They all treat candidates in a very sloppy and irresponsible way. All the other companies' recruiters have done their due diligence to complete some internal screening process, for example get the hiring manager looking at your qualification before contacting you, except Microsoft. They basically contact me out of whim, then I tried to treat them responsibly by agreeing to setup one hour talk with them, then one or two days latter without solid reason I received a rejection letter, not even going through a technical screen. In this case I have strong background and have very matching skill set the job requires. The funny thing is that my interviews are going well, I already get a few onsite interviews from a few top-notch companies. In another case, I honestly told the recruiter that there are some other Microsoft recruiters pinging me for opportunities, as this early stage, of course as an candidate I'd like to give consideration to more than one teams to test which one is a better match. Out of those companies which are way better than Microsoft, the recruiters basically all take a respective tolerate attitude trying to help you to team matching different teams if you show interest, except Microsoft. This recruiter, after spending one hour on the phone, and a few rounds of emails, after knowing this, just simply disappear in the air.
I will not waste my time on those terrible terrible recruiters again, it's just a pure waste of my life!
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Just normal stuff, during the talk, I can sense a lack of preparation towards the candidate's material like resume. I guess they didn't even spend time to read it beforehand before chatting you, just plain terrible!
I applied in-person. The process took 3 days. I interviewed at Microsoft (Redmond, WA) in Jan 2013
Interview
Questions focused on ability to build high performance and scalable application design. Heavy emphasis on writing lower level algorithms in C#. i.e. data structures.