I applied through an employee referral. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Microsoft in Sep 2008
Interview
Got the email from HR said I was referred by an employee and arranged a phone interview with me. Just a few simple questions, why do you want to come to microsoft etc.? Then she arranged another phone interview with one of their engineers, he asked several questions related to my resume and the projects I've worked on. Finally we set up a shared board and he asked several simple algorithms problems and ask me to write the code directly on the shared board (he can see what I type instantly).
After the phone interview, I got the on-site interview invitation in 2 days. And I did a 5 round 1:1 personal interview. There're various kinds questions, most of them are algorithm problems.
Interview questions [2]
Question 1
Given a large string (haystack), find a substring (needle) on it.
The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Microsoft (Redmond, WA) in Jul 2009
Interview
My interview consisted of three one-on-one interviews. Recruiters tell excuses. I heard from multiple other interviewees that their fourth interviewer was at home sick, but really this means they didn't make the cut. I think they have a policy of lying to get you out the door ASAP if they don't like you. But, the engineers I met with were very nice and interesting. It's corporate policy to not give any feedback on interviews.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Write a function to format a string of something into a proper telephone number format.
The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Microsoft (Redmond, WA) in Dec 2009
Interview
I initially had an on campus interview in September. No word until late November. I was flown to Seattle the night before the interview. I didn't know how many interviews I would have when the day started. I went to my first interview with a Dev Lead. He asked me a question about trees - write an algorithm to verify that a tree is a binary search tree. My next interview was with a Program Manager. He asked me mostly about design - how would you design a crossword puzzle game that suggests words for you based on the letters you've already filled in. And the third guy was another Dev Lead who asked me to write the "shoot()" method in a game of battleship. He also had me talk about the data structures that backed it.
Interview questions [3]
Question 1
Write an algorithm to verify if a tree is a binary search tree.