Microsoft Interview Questions & Reviews
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Difficulty Rating [?] Based on 214 ratings
“Difficult”
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Interview Experience [?] Based on 214 ratings
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Interview questions and reviews posted anonymously by interview candidates (updated Feb 8, 2010).
| 1 - 10 of 213 Microsoft Interviews | Sort by |
Software Development Engineer In Test at Microsoft
Posted Feb 4, 2010 — 1 of 1 people found this helpful
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3.0
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Overall Negative Experience
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Interviewed and No Offer
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Interviewed Oct 2009 (took 2 weeks)
Be prepared for the questions about your past experience in details as much as possible.
If you mentioned any strong part in your remsume, i.e. SQL Server, you should spend at least 1 weeks full time study on that before interview and ready for hard questions on that.
Interview Questions
Other Details
I got the interview through an Employee Referral and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview, a 1:1 Interview, a Skills Test and a Personality Test.
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Engineering at Microsoft
Posted Feb 8, 2010
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3.0
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Overall Neutral Experience
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Interviewed and No Offer
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Interviewed Dec 2009 (took 1 week)
First, got an email from HR for setting up a phone interview. HR gave a list of timeslots over two days and asked all timeslots I am available for the interview. Also HR asked me to fill-up a candidate interest form. After sending my free slots and the filled interest form, I got an email with my assigned slot and the interviewer name.
Though that I mentioned 'Dev' as the first preference and 'Testing' as the second preference in the candidate interest form., I found out later in the interview that it was for a Testing position.
Interview Questions
Other Details
I got the interview through a College or University and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview.
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Software Development Engineer at Microsoft
Posted Feb 5, 2010
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4.0
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Overall Positive Experience
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Interviewed and No Offer
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Interviewed Nov 2009 (took a day)
I submit my resume on career fair of my university and got the on-campus interview. It is a pure technical interview with C/C++ and computer algorithm. So before interview, you should be very familiar with computer data structure and coding very quickly.
Interview Questions
Other Details
I got the interview through a College or University and the interview consisted of a 1:1 Interview.
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Senior Consultant at Microsoft
Posted Feb 4, 2010
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4.0
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Overall Positive Experience
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Received and Accepted Offer
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Interviewed Jan 2010 (took a day)
The interview process was very straightforward. I went in on an employee referral, so since I had already worked very closely with Microsoft consultants before on major projects for the federal government they already knew what I brought to the table. Since I'm the security side of technology I interviewed with a total of 7 people, one person that holds patents for encryption, another gentleman that is the lead security engineer for windows in Redmond. So needless to say that they were intense. Questions went from nuts and bolts all the way up to well what's the big picture. If you know what you are talking about and have the confidence then it shouldn't be a problem. One thing is, don't say you know something and then try to dance around the question if you don't know it then just say you don't know. They only reason I would say that finals day is difficult is because of how long a day it is when they say all day they mean 9-5!
Interview Questions
Other Details
I got the interview through an Employee Referral and the interview consisted of a 1:1 Interview and a Group/Panel Interview.
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Program Manager at Microsoft
Posted Feb 3, 2010
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3.0
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Overall Positive Experience
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Interviewed and No Offer
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Interviewed Feb 2010 (took a day)
Good experience all in all. I interviewed for Windows which means that instead of interviewing with one particular team I met with 5 different senior level PM's from completely different parts of Windows. Questions ranged from design, behavioral, experience, and technical. To prepare make sure you understand what design questions are like (design a microwave that has a touch-screen) and be ready to have a number of different leadership/team dynamics stories ready to go (each interviewer speaks with the one before you and after you so you can't re-use them much).
Don't have my results yet but I've heard getting 5 interviews means you have a shot (I've heard only getting 3 means you didn't get it)
Interview Questions
Other Details
I got the interview through a College or University and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview and a 1:1 Interview.
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Research Software Development Engineer at Microsoft
Posted Feb 2, 2010
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3.0
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Overall Positive Experience
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Interviewed and No Offer
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Interviewed Nov 2008 in Redmond, WA (took 2 months)
The process started with submitting resume at career fair, then had a on-campus interview. Basic questions were asked about projects etc, followed by writing code for a simple problem. After 2 weeks got a call for on-site interview. Was told there would be 3-5 interview in Redmond office with Live Search Data Mining group. The recruiter had no idea how different the interview process would be compared to SDE position. As such i brushed up on my research more than the algo+data structure parts.
On the day of the interview, I arrived early in the morning and went over simple hr type questions ie. why msft, why would i choose them over others etc. I was given the name of the my first interview and told that each interview would take me to the next one (depending on how well i did). Also the interviewers would discuss the area they covered in the interview and how i performed with the next interviewer (and have me sit in the lobby when the discussed this).
The first interviewer was the dev lead and went over my resume, ask some questions about my projects then saw that i had TA for cryptography a while back at school, so asked me to design a card game online where the player cannot cheat. this was followed by a prob. question and to write code for it. After that he took me to the next interview. This person too was a senior member of the team. He asked another algo/coding question, which i barely managed to get done in the time we had. Next interview was lunch interview, this is 1.5 hrs compared to previous 1hr ones. He went in lot more detail about my research work and what they do. This was followed by a couple of simple coding question when we got back to his office, but i performed quite poorly there. After that he took me to the next interview, this started with a simple coding question which he made progressively harder till i was stuck. After i was done he said this was my last interview of the day and he accompanied my outside to the recruiting shuttle. He basically said even though this position involved research, coding part is more important, and i didn't perform as well. After i went back to the recruiting building, the recruiter wasn't there but had left a packet of info about Seattle (based on a survey i had to fill in before the interviews). After 2 days i got back a mail from the recruiter that there would be no offer.
All the coding questions i was asked were standard and available on various ms/google questions site (which i didn't prepare as well on). Also just don't solve the questions there, think about all possible follow up questions, can you improve it space/time, would caching/ locality help, special cases (uniform distribution of numbers etc).
Interview Questions
Other Details
I got the interview through a College or University and the interview consisted of a 1:1 Interview and a Background Check.
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Software Development Engineer In Test (SDET) at Microsoft
Posted Feb 2, 2010
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3.0
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Overall Neutral Experience
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Interviewed and No Offer
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Interviewed Jun 2008 in Seattle, WA (took a day)
remember to prepare yourself on how to test random objects like staplers and water balloons! Also make sure you revise all that you learned in your data structures class. String manipulation is also very important. And google to learn about brain teasers!
Interview Questions
Other Details
I got the interview through a Recruiter and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview and a 1:1 Interview.
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User Experience at Microsoft
Posted Feb 1, 2010
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4.0
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Overall Positive Experience
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Received and Declined Offer
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Interviewed Sep 2009 in Seattle, WA (took 1 week)
It was a great experience. Rigorous. I didn't really get any infamous trick questions though was asked to walk through a project and my interviewer actively questioned and participated - making it feel more like a dialog. It was a long day got great insight into the group.
Interview Questions
Reason for Declining
Got another offer elsewhere
Other Details
I Applied Online and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview, a 1:1 Interview and a Background Check.
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Software Development Engineer at Microsoft
Posted Jan 31, 2010
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3.0
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Overall Neutral Experience
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Interviewed and No Offer
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Interviewed Jan 2010 in Seattle, WA (took a day)
First , campus interview, the questions are very simple. they ask me write a simple program.
Then, Onsite interview, there are 5 rounds.
The first 4 rounds are technical question, they all ask me to write the code on the white board.
The fifth one is the group manager who asked me some behavior question and give me lots of introduction information to their group.
Other Details
I got the interview through a College or University and the interview consisted of a 1:1 Interview and a Background Check.
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Software Development Engineer In Test (SDET) III at Microsoft
Posted Jan 30, 2010
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4.0
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Overall Negative Experience
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Interviewed and No Offer
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Interviewed Jan 2010 in Redmond, WA (took a day)
Phone interview about general work history led to in person meeting. Question asked: In a given string find the last unique character. My answer was to filter out special cases (empty string, null string, blank string, single character string...) Some of this required firming up requirements (e.g. What do you return with a null string?) Interviewer's eyes rolled when I asked this and I was told to not worry about it, just code the answer.
The actual coding was to be done on a whiteboard. My solution was to start from the end of the string and loop backwards. For each character compare the first index position against the last index position of the same character. If first and last index positions were the same the character was unique. Since I started from the end of the string the first time this happened was the last unique character. When that happened you dropped out of the loop and returned the answer.
I was told that this was wrong. The way to do it was to run through the loop and hash the characters and keep track of the current last hash created. When you finished the loop the last hash created was the last unique character. We talked about the big O values of each method
Overall the interview was difficult. The interviewer gave the impression their time was being wasted right from the start.
Interview Questions
Other Details
The interview consisted of a Phone Interview and a 1:1 Interview.
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