I applied through college or university. The process took 6 weeks. I interviewed at Microsoft in Mar 2011
Interview
Submitted resume through my university and got invited to interview on-campus two weeks later. The person in the career fair was very nice and helpful.
One day before the interview, the two persons from Microsoft held an event for all the candidates. Very few questions were asked by the candidates as the two interviewers spent a lot of time talking about the company.
The day of the interview, the interviewer was nice for about 2 minutes. After that, he started behaving very disinterested and spent more time looking at his laptop screen than listening to what I had to say.
His behavior made me very nervous, and plenty of times he interrupted to give me hints that I didn't need. Any pause for a few seconds would result in a comment along the lines of "You aren't doing what I asked."
Two weeks after the interview I received an e-mail to tell me I didn't make it to the 2nd round. My overall impression is that unless you can code recursive algorithms in less than five minutes, you shouldn't apply at Microsoft. Also to potential candidates don't forget to prepare for behavioral questions.
I applied through college or university. The process took 1 week. I interviewed at Microsoft in Feb 2009
Interview
First asked me to introduce myself, then asked technical questions. Wanted me to find a missing number in a consecutive number sequence, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ..., 999998, 999999, 1000000 and after given the solution, raised about questions of stack overflow. Also asked other questions, and all were not hard questions. That was for an intern position. Did not get any follow-up.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
finding a missing number in a continuous number sequence.
The process took 2 days. I interviewed at Microsoft (Seattle, WA) in Jan 2011
Interview
Submitted resume during university career fair, got email to sign up for 1st round interview few days after the fair. 1st round interviewed at university career center, takes about 30min. Brief review my resume, and then two programming question asked. Got feedback after about one week to offer fly me to Seattle, WA for second round. Flew there on Sunday, interviewed on Monday, and back the next day. Got feedback after 4 days saying they aren't gonna extend an offer.
Interview questions [5]
Question 1
Find nearest ATM machine given gps location and a list of ATMs