I applied through college or university. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Microsoft in Sep 2016
Interview
MS came to my school in a career fair. I chatted with a guy, who was an alumnus of my school, and submitted my resume. About a week later I was contacted for an on-campus interview. I thought I did well when the interviewer said I was the first one that solved the problem and wrote clean code. The problem was easy for me. Then, we chatted a little bit about his team and his work. The interviewer said I should hear back in 2-3 weeks.
I went home and waiting for a call but didn't hear anything after 1-2 months. I tried to email the recruiter who arranged the interview several times but she never replied. Because I won a programming competition hosted by MS, someone from MS sent me the reward and I took that chance to ask and received a typical rejection letter, which I anticipated. I would say that the recruiters had done a good job in damaging the image of MS.
I applied online. I interviewed at Microsoft (Melbourne)
Interview
After submitting an online application, I received a HackerRank assessment after passing the resume screening stage, then I was rejected after completing the assessment and did not proceed to further interview rounds.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
The assessment consisted of two LeetCode-medium-level coding questions to be completed within 75 minutes.
45 mins technical interview with a member of their San fran team. Very relaxed and informal but questions were focused and lots of follow ups. Easy to schedule as was over video conferencing platform
Straightforward technical loop overall, with strong interviewers at every stage. I genuinely enjoyed the in-depth conversations around technical challenges and algorithmic problem-solving — the entire process felt well-structured and genuinely engaging.