I applied through an employee referral. The process took 1+ week. I interviewed at Microsoft (Bellevue, WA) in Nov 2011
Interview
I've been through this process with Amazon and Google before and the phone screening process is pretty much the same. Not too many questions about resume or experience but algo and data structure questions.
Got a response the next day to tell me they wanted to bring me in for 1:1 interviews. Trip was schedule for the following week and the process is made very easy by the recruiter. They take care of everything for you and you just have to approve the final travel arrangements.
My on-site interviews started with a 30 minutes meeting with my recruiter. He then brought me back to the lobby area where the first interviewer (an SDET II) came to get me. We went to his office. We went through a couple of algo and data structure problems and he then asked me questions about design patterns and other behavioral stuff. It was about 60 minutes including some time for me to ask questions.
The next interview was over lunch (also with an SDET II) but was very similar. Being during lunch, the discussion seems a little more casual but you are still being interviewed and you still have to solve problems.
The last interview was with a Senior SDET Lead, in his office. He gave me an algo problem and a UI design question. The rest was based on my past experience and some behavioral questions. We ended up spending more time talking than solving problems.
I was pretty confident after the first 2 interviews but it all went downhill during the 3rd one. The reaction and facial expressions of my interviewer made me feel like I was getting it all wrong. He told me at the end that I was done which confirmed my feeling was right since they usually schedule more interviews if you are doing well.
Interview questions [2]
Question 1
Write a method to rotate an array at n without using O(1) space.
How would you test this method
Hacker Rank test and 3 Rounds of coding plus experience based interview.
Position was for QA who should have Storage and Networking knowledge. So basic questions on storage and networking.
I applied online. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Microsoft (Redmond, WA) in Feb 2020
Interview
Full day process broken into multiple individual one on one interviews which can include time at the blackboard writing snippets of code or scripting. Not for the faint of heart or the unprepared.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Can you write a script to reverse the contents of an array?
I applied through university. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Microsoft (Sydney) in Mar 2015
Interview
Applied through a university recruiter, and got to do an on-campus interview. The question was very easy (add an item to a sorted linked list) and I got to fly to Sydney for the next round. The second round consisted of 4 individual interviews with different people, with a range of difficulty for their interview questions.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Draw the system architecture of one of your projects