I applied on microsoft.com/careers for multiple positions. About a month later, I was emailed a document that included some questions asking me to rate myself in various programming languages, as well as a coding question. The question was to implement a function that returned true if a linked list had a cycle in it.

After filling out and returning the document, I was set up for a phone interview with the team. During the phone interview, I was asked some soft questions about my interests in technology, background, etc. I was also asked how I would implement a function to convert a character array into an integer. I was told I would be hearing from them again.

The next day, the recruiter emailed me to set up an in-person interview in Redmond, Washington. On the day of the interview, I went to the wrong building and ended up barely making my interview time. Tip: Arrive early!

• Interviewer 1 - SDET: Soft questions about my background, then jumped into a coding question: How would I reverse words in a paragraph of text? I coded it out, and he pointed out a bug, which I fixed.
• Interviewer 2 - Lead SDE: Jumped right into a coding question. There's a tree where, in addition to the left/right pointers, there's another pointer set to NULL. I was to write a function to traverse the tree, initializing that pointer to the node's sibling, so basically connecting up the levels of the tree.
• Interviewer 3 - Lead SDET: Print tree level by level. I coded up a solution in 10 minutes and ran some test cases through it. He then sold me on his team.
• Interviewer 4 - Lead SDET: No coding question. The entire interview was me writing a test plan to test a robot.
• Interviewer 5 - Development Manager: Some chit-chat about my resume, then a coding question. Print the count of letters in an array. So, if the array was "ababac," I would print a - 3, b - 2, c - 1.

After the interview, the manager said I would hear from them soon. The next day, I was given an offer, contingent on a background check.

Find a cycle in a linked list.

Reverse words in a paragraph of text.

Connect levels of a tree.

Print a tree level by level.