Microsoft Lead Program Manager Interview Questions & Reviews

Interviewed Apr 2011 in Paris (France) (took 2 months)

I applied online after seeing the ad on the Microsoft's job board.
It was mid-March, and the position has already been opened for some time. I got no reply from Microsoft for a while (three weeks). Here in France, Microsoft does not deal with the interview process directly, but through an employment agency (Futurestep); luckily, some former worker at Microsoft Zune and friend of mine gave me his recruitment contact at FutureStep. I emailed that person, to learn that she was not in charge of that department anymore, but got forwarded to the right person. Waited a bit more (two weeks) and finally heard back from the agency.

Got a phone interview with the manager of the role. First time the guy flaked on me, and I could not get ahold of him nor of Futurestep for 24 hours before hearing about rescheduling the meeting. Next time was the right time: the phone interview lasted for 25 minutes, and I got to learn very little about the position's day to day work.

Did not hear again from Microsoft for some time (two weeks). Sent back emails several times and finally got a day long request of interviews, a bit more than two months after my initial application.

I prepared very carefully for the interview, though I had been learned by my friend that this part of Microsoft was quite chaotic. The job was at Microsoft Zune, formerly Musiwave, a French company bought by MS in 2007, and the Zune team has not been yet fully integrated into Microsoft France (even geographically). So I went to the interview ready to be wowed by the power of Microsoft.
Very disappointed I was. Although the day schedule was saying: "8:40am - 9am: breakfast and interview details", the breakfast consisted of two croissants each (we were three candidates going through the same process for that position), a coffee from the machine, and no briefing at all. I was supposed to meet my superior (the one who had flaked already once) at 9am, but got successively told that he'll be late (9:20am) then that he won't be there until 10am (9:40am) and that we would postpone our meeting in the afternoon.
Rest of the interviews went all right, a technical one, another about management experience, and then lunch with a potential future Lead PM colleague. At that time, I still had no clue about the daily activity of the position. I had learned about the responsibilities of the role, don't get me wrong, I knew what was expected to be a good Lead PM, I even learned the core MS values, everything was going fine on that perspective.

2pm came and I was told that the day would be over for me. I got to go home without meeting with the position's manager, and without any valuable information to actually gauge my interest for the role.
Two days later I was told they had preferred a more technical profile.

So, yes, that whole experience was very disappointing. It's like I had been interviewed by a fake Microsoft company. Nothing about how great it is to work at Microsoft, nothing about the pros of the job and the company, and nothing about the job itself. I don't really want to consider working at Microsoft again now.