I applied through university. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Microsoft (Redmond, WA) in Jan 2008
Interview
I interviewed as a senior in college. The interviewing process consisted of two phases for me: (1) a single on-campus interview when Microsoft visited my college campus, and (2) a day-long on-site interview at Microsoft's campus in Redmond.
The on-campus interview was with an engineer and consisted of some simple technical questions. We also talked a bit about some programming projects I had worked on at school. I believe they were looking for basic technical chops and enthusiasm for engineering.
The on-site interview consisted of one interview with an HR person and 4 interviews with engineers (two from one product/team, and two from a completely different product/team). The interview with the HR person was non-technical and focused on why I was interested in becoming an engineer. The interviews with engineers were all technical in nature. They mostly consisted of programming and algorithms questions of moderate difficulty --- the usual affair. I also had lunch at some point with one of the engineers I ended up interviewing with.
One of the technical interviews was fairly nonstandard. I was asked to come up with a design (hardware/software) for a robotic telescope. The question was very open-ended, though the interviewer of course gave some guidance. I believe the purpose of the question was to gauge the ability of the candidate to design a (real-world) system.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Describe how to design a robotic telescope. Talk about hardware (robotics/sensors); talk about software (linear algebra/control).
The interview was a long process. There was first the recruiter screen, which was followed by a 4-loop interview structure that covered technical, behavioral, and system design. The interviewers were very kind and accommodating.
I applied online. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Microsoft
Interview
After my application to ClipChamp - Microsoft, a recruiter reached out and scheduled my first interview. It was about basic interview questions and background analysis. After that I had my technical interview. The recruiter specifically said that I would be facing medium hacker rank questions. So I prepared accordingly. However, what I actually got was to analyse an application and re work it according to new requirements. I felt like I was set up for failure on purpose. Didn’t even hear back after that interview.
Took a bit longer than I thought, spanning about three weeks from start to finish. After a quick recruiter screen, I had a technical round where I was asked about validating a binary search tree. The wild part is, I had literally seen this exact problem on prachub.com while prepping. It helped me feel more confident discussing my approach and edge cases. There was also a behavioral interview where I shared my experiences, and eventually, I received an offer. I chose to decline it, though, as it wasn't the right fit for me at the time.
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