Microsoft had stopped by my university (University of Illinois at Chicago) for our career fair, the day before they held a hiring event. I turned my resume into a recruiter and got maybe a minute at most to discuss some things (there were a good 200 people and around 4 recruiters so they were trying to move quick). About two weeks later I got an email saying they'd like to set up an on-site interview. Going into the interview it became apparent that the recruiter had guessed which position to place us in (PM, SDE, or SDET), I was suggested for an SDET position. The first interview was still an overall interview to see which would be a best fit. We discussed basic interview questions like what group projects I had worked on, what I plan to do with my career, why I'd like to work for Microsoft and so on. There was a design question, asking how I'd change the room we were sitting in. There was also a programming question, reversing the characters of words within a string (ex. 'Here is a string' to 'ereh si a gnirts'). I answered both answers going into a lot of detail, but he was impressed with the design question and passed on a recommendation for a PM position. Two weeks later I was contacted saying I was moving on to the next round and they'd contact me to set up a phone interview for a PM position. The phone interview covered most of the same questions as the first interview, but with more of an emphasis on the PM role. The first question was to design a watch, which took roughly 15 minutes to complete going through every possible aspect of it (marketing, target audience, various price builts, build, etc.). Following that was a relatively standard brainteaser. At the very end they asked if I would be interested in the MSIT program. We didn't have much time so I only got a brief description, but I agreed to it and the interview ended. Another two weeks later I get an email saying I was moving onto the final round in Redmond for an SDE/SDET position in the MSIT program. There was a good amount of paperwork but the recruiter I worked with helped me with any issues I had. They picked up the tab for the flight, rental car and hotel, as well as reimbursement for food during my visit. Fast forward another five weeks. Shuttle's were parked outside of my hotel in Bellevue (a town close to Redmond) at 7am to pick up about 20 candidates going to three different locations on campus. Upon arrival we were brought into a really nice lobby and offered food and beverages. From there we were set up with four interviews at 45 minutes a piece. After my first interview I quickly realized that I had made a mistake with my resume. I mentioned that I had worked with relational databases, and I put a little too much emphasis on it. Each interviewer dealt with databases, and three of them focused on just those concepts. For the most part I was able to hold my own, but my second interviewer really grilled me and I definitely fumbled. The questions he asked me were out of my scope. I answered as best as I could, but I asked for more hints than I would have liked. The other two databases interviews were on much broader subjects that I am comfortable with. Another common theme between all of them was testing. All of my questions were followed up instantly with, "alright, now how do we test this?" The immediate response I had was always testing out functionality (which is something I do in my job). The answer they were looking for, and would eventually get out of me, is other concepts like concurrency, CPU/memory usage and exception handling. So with those items in mind, how would we test to make sure we won't run into those issues, or how do we test to see if they are indeed an issue. Asking around between interviews I realized I was one of few that was getting these types of questions. Everyone else had standard fare programming questions, something I had prepared for. I only briefly studied for databases, so learn from my mistake. If it's on your resume, make sure you know it well! Rather than keep us all waiting on campus they shuttled us back to our hotel around 1pm, letting us know we'd hear from them within the next four hours. The next stretch seemed to last for forever. 6pm came and no word, I sent them an email around 7pm to gauge where they were at. Around 10pm I got a text from Michael (the University Staffing Ninja as his email signature suggets) saying he had been busy and I should hear within the hour. About 4 minutes to midnight I got an email stating that I had been given an offer and a follow up call would go over the details. In that respect, they kept their promise that I'd get results the same day. Overall, I really enjoyed the experience. It's made clear that even though they dish out a good chunk of change to have you visit Redmond, it's not a guaranteed position. They can tell you have potential, and this is your time to really impress your potential teammates.