I submitted my CV via a Microsoft presentation at my university and received a follow-up email a couple of weeks later.

PHONE INTERVIEW:

The first part of the interview was by phone. I actually interviewed for a Program Manager position.

Initially, the questions were behavioral (e.g., "What do you like about programming?", "What's a problem that you've solved?", "Illustrate a problem that was solved as a team."). The Program Manager technical questions were mostly logical reasoning (e.g., "If you owned a custom shoe store, what questions would you ask the customer in order to ascertain their needs?").

I was flown to Sydney about six months later for the second round of interviews, which was for an SDET/SDE internship.

1:1 INTERVIEW

Overall, I interviewed with four people, roughly 45 minutes each. In between interviews, while the interviewers discussed the candidates, we (a group of five) were shown a presentation about Microsoft.

Interviews consisted of a behavioral question (e.g., "What's a programming project that you've done?") followed by two to three technical questions (e.g., "Given an array of negative and positive numbers, provide an algorithm to find the sequence that yields the largest sum. What are some interfaces of a vending machine and how do they interact with each other?"). Each interview concluded with a general "Is there anything you'd like to ask me?" – prepare questions beforehand!

After the four interviews, we were told the results straightaway.

TIPS:

• Ask a lot of clarification questions to narrow down the problem. It might help to repeat the question back to the interviewer.
• Vocalize everything you do, even if it's something you don't plan on using (e.g., "My first thought is to use an array, but although it has O(1) for retrieval, it can be inefficient as we don't know the number of elements and would potentially need to constantly resize.").
• Admit you don't know something if you're stuck.
• Show that you're passionate about programming or working at Microsoft.

Overall, it was very positive; the interviewers were very helpful and genuine.

Given an array of positive and negative numbers, provide an algorithm that finds the sequence of numbers yielding the largest sum. The numbers must be in sequential order.