TLDR: The worst interview experience of my life. The Microsoft recruitment team did a terrible job.

I met with a recruiter on my university's campus in October 2015 and gave her my resume. I told her I was interested in a hardware intern position, but she set me up with an interview for the software internship instead. I asked about it in an email response, and she told me that if I could get a job in software, I could switch to hardware once I got there for the summer. I had an on-campus interview which seemed to go well. It was mostly behavioral and experiential questions with one coding question. The interviewer kept cutting my responses off, which was unsettling.

I followed up with a thank you, and my recruiter told me I would hear back in three weeks. Three weeks went by, and I still hadn't heard a response, so I sent a follow-up. The recruiter got back to me and told me to wait two more weeks. I didn't get a response in two weeks, so I sent another follow-up. The recruiter then told me I would move on to the next round of interviews and connected me to a new recruiter. The new recruiter informed me that I would be interviewing in person and should be in contact with a scheduler within the next two weeks to set up an interview time. I told her about my situation and wanting to work in hardware, and she said it should be fine. The scheduler sent me an email asking for three dates I could make it for interviews in Raleigh, NC. I provided the three dates, and she responded with a form to fill out with the final date. This was in early to mid-January 2016.

I didn't hear any confirmation on my flight or hotel within two weeks (by the end of January 2016). I sent a follow-up, and the scheduler responded saying she had been sending emails to the wrong address (I was very frustrated at this point). She also stated there were no more positions in Raleigh, so I would be interviewing in Seattle.

I finally got flight confirmation and arrived in Seattle with confirmation for my first interview the next morning at 11 am. I woke up early, around 8 am, which was lucky because around 8:25 am, I received a call from my scheduler. She told me she had given me the wrong time and location for my interview; I was actually supposed to meet with a recruiter at 8:30 am at a location 30 minutes away from my hotel. I had two and a half heart attacks and told her I didn't have transportation. She instructed me to grab a Microsoft shuttle and reassured me that this mistake wouldn't count against me and that she had alerted my interviewers.

I quickly got ready and made it to the first interview by 9:20 am. I unfortunately never got to meet with the recruiter, so I didn't even know what team I was interviewing with until I got there. I found out I was meeting with CDM (load management) from my first interviewer because I had to ask, and I felt unprepared and unprofessional. I had previously been told I was interviewing for Microsoft in general, not a specific team. My interviewer then informed me directly that I was interviewing for an internship with the CDM team (remembering I initially wanted a hardware position and was told I could switch). He gave me a schedule for the rest of the day, and the interviews seemed to go well from there.

I had three 50-minute interviews back-to-back, with lunch immediately after my second interview. The questions were all related to iterating through arrays. They were pretty standard questions, but considering I am a computer engineering student with a focus in computer architecture, I felt out of my comfort zone (again, remembering I initially wanted a hardware position). All three interviewers were nice, but they didn't ask any behavioral questions and only one or two experiential questions, which indicated to me they were ultimately looking for coders rather than collaborators and innovators.

At the end of the day, I was told to go meet the recruiter I was originally supposed to meet with that morning back at the recruitment building. When I arrived and checked in, I was told he was too busy and to email him my thoughts on how it went. He sent a quick response, stating I would hear back within a week. Two days later, I received a formal rejection stating I should wait a year before reapplying for a position at Microsoft.

Overall, this was the most horrible interviewing experience I have ever had, and likely anyone will ever have at Microsoft. I see this case as an anomaly for the company, but I feel obligated to share my feedback. I felt like they weren't even going to hire me and were just hoping I would give up and not follow up. It was a waste of my time and energy, and a waste of the interviewers' time as well, considering I didn't even want the position they were interviewing me for.

All the stuff you can find in CTCI. Mostly iterating over arrays.