Microsoft Marketing Manager Interview Questions & Reviews

Interviewed Apr 2008 in Bellevue, WA (took a day)

I was a vendor in the same department as where I was interviewing. As such the interview was a little odd as I was talking with people I had been working with for the last 8 months. I feel having contracted before (on essentially the same work) gave me a huge advantage for the job since the real “interview” happened in the months prior.

I interviewed with five different people and knew more about the nature of the work and department then any of them (again, because of my experience as a vendor). The interviewers included a wide variety of directors that I would be working with as well as one GM from another marketing org who was a stakeholder of the position with no reporting relationship. All of them asked mostly general interest, personality, and culture type questions as well as discussing their individual department strategies. The GM simply wanted to know how me switching from vendor to fte would affect him and said he had already given my recommendation prior to the interview. The hiring manager was really the only resource with a vision for how the role should function and he spent much of his interview communicating this (which was very helpful).

Again, I feel my real “interview” happened through my work and successes in the same department as a contractor. As this organization has a fairly significant contractor budget they very commonly take a “try before you buy” approach where they hire contractors who demonstrate real capability. This also gave me excellent visibility in to the culture and work environment in advance so by the time I was hired on I already knew exactly what to expect, had no surprises at all, was fully ramped up, and had a ton of work from day one. Despite what I was told, the interview process felt more like a formality than anything else and I believe they altered the FTE position specifically so they could hire me into it.