There was one phone interview, lasting around 30 minutes, with a recruiter. I did not realize that Microsoft allows its recruiters to conduct the technical phone screen.

For a major part of the interview, I was asked mostly resume-based questions. One technical question was to explain recursion.

When there were only 5 minutes left, the recruiter asked me a puzzle, a very pedantic one at that. While I was mostly prepared for algorithms and data structures, I had not bothered to go through the usual brain teasers that Microsoft was once infamous for asking.

Given two jugs which can hold 5 quarts and 3 quarts of water, measure 4 quarts. This is a pretty standard puzzle.