I applied through a university recruiter in late August and got a phone interview in three weeks. It was a basic get-to-know-you and a brain teaser.

The next stage was an assessment center, which I attended via Skype due to some clerical mistakes on Microsoft's side. The assessment center consisted of three interviews (which can be four), each lasting about 45 minutes with a 15-minute break. The interviews included live coding via the CollabEdit website.

Merge two sorted arrays, A and B.

The result should end up in B, which has available space for all items. Utilize the space in B; do not use temporary arrays. The result should be a sorted array in B.

A = { 2, 5, 8, 12, 15 } B = { 3, 5, 7, 9, , , , , , }

Given an MxM matrix, where M is odd, fill the matrix with values from 1 to M^2, starting from the middle and spiraling outwards.

Given a tree, write a serializer for it. Ensure it can be reconstructed from it as well.

class Node { public Node Left; public Node Right; public byte[] Data; }