• They have a massive presence around the country with a variety of different roles
• On-site interviews seem lengthy but feedback is generally positive
• Compensation is on the high end of average compared to similar companies
• Microsoft covers travel and accommodation expenses for the onsite interview

On average, it takes 1-2 months to undergo the entire interview process for a software engineer position at Microsoft.

Stage 1: Phone interview (30 mins) or on-campus interview.
This involves technical question(s) related to the candidate's background/projects.
Stage 2: Group interview + whiteboard coding interview
Candidates, in groups of 10-20, will be cycled through 4 interviewers. They will have 3 - 5 whiteboard coding interviews, including a lunch interview. The problems are algorithmic in nature and candidates are expected to test and clarify requirements. Each interview is about an hour long and between each one there is a break where the interviewers discuss the candidate's performance. Each interviewer has a hire/no hire decision. If the candidate receive 2 no hires out of first 3 interviews, their day may be cut short. The 5th interview is the hiring manager and ultimately has veto power.

The average time to finish the entire interview process for a data scientist position at Microsoft is 2-4 weeks.

Stage 1: Phone screen
The recruiter reviews the candidate's resume, research experience, past projects, and knowledge of machine learning & Python.
Stage 2: Code test
The interviewer sends a link to an interactive coding page and asks the candidate to write R code to solve the coding question.
Stage 3: Full day onsite interview
Onsite there are a series of interviews that last all day, including a lunch interview. There are back-to-back algorithm interviews. The questions are statistical, inference questions, math modeling questions, managing questions, coding questions etc.

On average the interview process for a user experience designer at Microsoft might take 2-4 weeks or longer.

Stage 1: 30 min phone interview
Learn more about the position and share your background with the recruiter.
Stage 2: 1hr phone interview
Present your projects and process to the design manager and answer questions.
Stage 3: Onsite interview
The onsite interview begins with a portfolio presentation to an audience of roughly 20-25 employees. Next, there are 1 on-1 interviews with senior team members and design managers, followed by lunch. In the afternoon, the candidate gets an hour to solve a very open ended design prompt and then presents the challenge to all interviewers they have met so far for 30 mins, using the whiteboard to show their thought process. At the end is 1 on 1 interview with a senior division leader.

On average, the interview process for a product manager position at Microsoft takes 2-4 weeks.

Stage 1: Phone interview
The phone interview includes a variety of behavioral questions/projects and technical and product questions. They might also include several "case-like" questions that analyze the candidate's logic, critical thinking, and analytical abilities.
Stage 2: Onsite interview
The in-person interview is an all day affair, including interviews with 4 product managers and they may even include a stress interviewer to see how the candidate reacts unders stress.

• Implement a lock.
• Swap a doubly linked list in pairs.
• Implement a bounded bifocii data structure using an array and efficient enqueue and dequeue algorithms
• numbers represented as linked lists. write a function that takes 2 numbers as ll and returns the sum of them, as a linked list. e.g function(1->2->3, 4->5) => 1->6->8
Traditional string manipulation question, but you need to use C++.
Possible moves for the Knight on a chess board, including when the Knight will go off the board.
Design an old style mobile phone and search for various names based on key press
Implement a couple of existing methods from standard libraries.
Challenging algorithm and advanced CS fundamental questions
Write the C++ strtok method
Write a function to print an array in a spiral.
Measuring X gallons with A and B gallon buckets.
Find the longest palindrome in a string.
Strings and UMLs and binary trees
How would you reverse every other node in a linked list?
Remove duplicates from an integer array (unsorted)
Explain a time where you needed to make changes to a system and why you decided the changes were necessary.
Delete a node from bst.
Write a function to find the middle of a linked list. Use it to perform merge sort on a linked list.
Implement a hash table.
API design for tic tac toe.
Data structure design for a modified version of a priority queue.
API design for running tracker/recommendation app.
Knapsack problem
What is merge sort?
What is quick sort?
Number of islands style recursive problem
In order successor of binary tree

• The difference between lasso, ridge; introduce some dimension reduction technique
• How to explain a deep learning model to customers?
• How to explain p-value to customers.
• Basic stats and machine learning questions.
Given a time series dataset, how would you predict the future value?
Replace empty cells with the median
What is the ROC curve and the meaning of sensitivity, specificity, confusion matrix
Generate a fair coin from a biased one.
Generate 7 integers with equal probability from a function which returns 1/0 with probability p and (1-p).
Tell me about your most recent project + questions
Find the maximum of sub sequence in an integer list.
Knowledge of A/B testing
Random-forest and lasso
Code a problem in Python, C++ / C#, R, SQL, Hadoop
Lots of statistics, probability, math, computer science, and database related questions.
How to builds ads model, basic algorithms.
Three friends in Seattle told you it's raining. Each has a 1/3 probability of lying. What's the probability that Seattle is raining?
Can you explain the Naive Bayes fundamentals? How did you set the threshold?
Can you explain what MapReduce is and how it works?
How do you detect if a new observation is an outlier? What is bias-variance trade off?
Can you explain SVM to me?
Perform a series of calculations without a calculator and provide your logic behind the steps.
Discuss how to randomly select a sample from a product user population.
How do you implement autocomplete?
Do you know l1 norm or l0 norm

• Questions regarding balancing design aspirations with legacy and about behaving in a stressful & competitive work environment.
• Design aptitude and some design challenges
• If you could improve one mobile experience, what would it be and why?
• Can you expect the end user to finnick with their settings to accommodate your design?
What do you do when the requirement from the stakeholder is vague?
How would you help an independent coffee shop owner who is about to go out of business in a month?
Design problem: How might you solve or improve this situation? There are various scenarios/problems.
Design an app for a store
What brand do you admire and why?
How can you help improve X feature in Excel?
How would you design [particular feature element] differently?
Show us an example of a website with great design.
Walk me through your portfolio.
What type of technology are you interested in?
Quickly whiteboard out a portion of the interface for a new app (ex: an app for bikers that want to schedule training courses/routes with friends)
How would you design a kitchen?

• What's your favorite Microsoft product
• How to output a tree in column sequence from left to right.
• What is your favorite app? What would you change about it?
• How might you handle this theoretical marketing situation, with a focus on reasoning and process
Design an airport traffic control system
Enterprise technology knowledge
Are there any complications in C when you try to typecast an Integer to an enum?
What would be your thought process in designing elevators for a building?
A mix of technical questions (a version of Mergesort) and non-technical (redesign the shopping experience).
Design a novel remote control that has only one button to control the TV. Write the binary search.
How would you design a web-based application for collaborative work?
How would you make make payments easy on phones and xbox?
Design a system to advise drivers how many spots in the parking lot are free
How would you market the Windows 8 pre-packaged product?
Specific questions about high level tech trends & things in the news
How else could you market ping pong balls if ping pong itself became obsolete? (List many, then pick one and go into detail)
What is a product you think is marketed well? How would you improve the marketing for it?
Design a method that removes every other node from a linked list.
How would you get authentication to work across domains?
Should we launch a product in XYZ market? Why or why not?
Explain a technical product that was marketed very well. What exactly did they do?
How many ping pong balls can you fit into a warehouse?
If you were to market the Microsoft brand on-campus, how would you do that?
How would you calculate the market value of the Segway market in the United States of America?

Mission

Come to Microsoft to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.

Vision

To help people and businesses throughout the world realize their full potential.

Innovation
Innovation is a core focus area at Microsoft. They are known for making innovative and affordable technology. More than 1000 researchers work in their labs to produce innovative technology.

Diversity and inclusion
One of Microsoft's key focus areas is diversity and inclusion. Microsoft is focused on maximizing the contribution of each individual whether they are employees or customers, so that diverse thoughts reflect their ecosystem of innovation.

Corporate social responsibility
Microsoft strives to be a responsible partner to those around them. If society has placed its trust in Microsoft then Microsoft functions to sustain the trust. To focus on it, the brand works in a manner that is inclusive, transparent, and respectful of human rights.

Philanthropies
Microsoft is focused on empowerment. For that purpose, they invest in technology, finance, and their employees. The company also supports programs that are aimed at narrowing the digital divide.

Environment
They are leading the way in using technology for sustainable business as well as to minimize their impact on the nature.

Trustworthy Computing
It is not just computing, but trustworthy computing that makes Microsoft so special. They serve businesses and people best by providing computing services that are secure, private, and reliable.