Microsoft's JobsBlog

Ha! I get the first comment. I am actually the exact opposite of this article. I try and try and try. It can be a bit frustrating trying to get in at Microsoft when your career track isn't quite the mainstream positions recruiters look for. However, I continued to look for other positions outside of Microsoft. I got an internship with a small company that had employees who had worked at Microsoft. They introduced me to people at Microsoft who do the type of work I want to do. I had some informational interviews and learned a lot. Next thing I know, I get contacted from a recruiting agency about a contract position at Microsoft. I am now working as a contract worker for the next year at Microsoft. We would all like instant gratification in the job market by landing the ideal job right out of college. That just hasn't been the case for me. However, I know that as I work my way through all the interviews and the networking, I am getting closer and closer to my goal. So I am not intimidated by failing. I wouldn't get any chances if I didn't risk anything.

I think a lot of students don't apply for Microsoft because its hiring process is intimidating. I think most of them simply reject Microsoft and are not willing to go through the BS required to get a job there and end up building products people hate. This blog is a proof that, to guarantee its future, Microsoft depends more and more on foreigners, especially people from 3rd world countries that have technical background and no professional future if they don't move to other places.

Hi Elizabeth,

Yeah are absolutely right that the interview process is too frighten. Actually Microsoft's hiring team should take the interview of person from his/her areas of interest. Even an applicant has no idea about the team who will take his interview its either the visual studio team or the windows update team, kernel development team etc.

The seocnd thing that have worth is the response time after an applicant apply for a position. I applied just after my Graduation and got response after 2 months from Microsoft's international recruiter in which he mentioned that we will review your resume and qualifications and if we find an appropriate match with our available positions then someone will follow up with you directly. so this a very long period and a fresh graduate cannot wait because if he waits then it is full loss of time which he/she can utilize in gaining experience in other organizations. so these two reasons let the candidate to apply in other organizations.

Thanks

As a soon-to-be graduate who got hired full-time, one thing to do is to apply to Microsoft before you've actually graduated.  Nevertheless, it was under a month between application and offer for me.

And, being Canadian, I am a "foreigner", strictly speaking (just barely :)), but certainly not from a 3rd world country and certainly not without a professional future.

Besides, why should it matter where Microsoft hires from?  They're hiring people with technical skills to work in the US.  If they bring them from outside, all the better for the US economy to have one more skilled worker that didn't even draw any tax benefits like free elementary and secondary schooling.

"I think most of them simply reject Microsoft and are not willing to go through the BS required to get a job there and end up building products people hate."

I think that nails a lot of them.  I was a bit embarrassed, actually, to admit I was accepting an offer from the "Dark Side" instead of going to grad school like I originally intended.  Microsoft has a bit of a nasty image in the field, sometimes deserving it more than others.  If you're not sure you even want to work for big bad MS, why would you want to go through an unusally long and difficult hiring process?

Ens: What makes Americans (and possibly Canadians) different on that matter is that we have choices. We can work for startups, or other big companies. We don't have to work for Microsoft. For most of us, Microsoft is the last option in the list. It's hard to justify for ourselves why we work for a company that has such a bad public image. For 3rd world people, things are very different. Either they stay in their home countries and get no future, or they move to other places, such as the US. For them, Microsoft is a very good choice. I agree with you though that this is good for the US economy.

Ens:  

Congrats on the job offer! Here's a  few questions for you:

1) How would you describe your overall experience with the interviewing process?

2) Now that you have an accepted offer, how would you describe your experience with the immigration process? Are you getting a TN or H1B?

You input would be greatly appreciated.

Trying to respond to a few comments...

Ashleigh:

"I am getting closer and closer to my goal. So I am not intimidated by failing. I wouldn't get any chances if I didn't risk anything."

Right On!  That's so great!  Congratulations on your drive, persistance and on making steps toward accomplishing your goals.  Especially when the goals are lofty or are going to be a challenge, it can seem far away, or impossible or unlikely at times, but it takes a lot of courage and passion to keep driving toward that goal.  Congrats and I hope things keep moving in the right direction for you!

Haider:

"Microsoft's hiring team should take the interview of person from his/her areas of interest."

I want to clarify that this is the process for College canddiates, not for Industry candidates, but Haider is correct.  College recruiting supports all of the product teams who want to hire recent college graduates into their full time and internship positions.  Because of this and the volume of college students we interview and hire (both international and domestic), we can not guarantee which groups you will interview with before a couple of days before you interview.  The groups know this and don't expect you to have domain-specific knowledge or to have prepared for thier specific team.  We hope to match the groups you interview with as closely as possible to your interests and experience, but this isn't always possible.  You can absolutely influence which groups you interview with by working closely with your recruiter.  

Haider:

"The seocnd thing that have worth is the response time after an applicant apply for a position....  This a very long period and a fresh graduate cannot wait"

I completely agree.  This is much too long and there are a variety of reasons for this, none of which should inhibit us from keeping in touch with our candidates in a timely matter.  For others out there, keep in touch with your recruiter and if you don't hear back from them after a week, it is completely fair to "politely bug" them.  I wish I didn't have to recommend this, but there is a huge volume of applicants and just not enough time in the day.  :(

Timothy:

"For most of us, Microsoft is the last option in the list."

I am not sure I want to delve into the debates over Microsoft vs. the rest of the technology world and Microsoft's hiring of international candidates because you can find the same conversation on many other blogs (including this one) and I am not an expert in either area.  I do want to say that 85% of the students I have hired this year are domestic students.  This does not necessarily scale to the larger Staffing Org at Microsoft (I don't have those numbers), but I do not agree that the only reason people choose Microsoft is because it is the last resort.  I agree that there are many people for whom a start-up company or a company which focuses on different technology is a better choice.  There are also a lot of people who choose to work at Microsoft because it is the right choice for them.  

Hi Liz,

I was wondering if you knew if everyone was contacted about the results of the Microsoft scholarship yesterday? It says in the requirements section that on March 15, 2007 all applicants would be notified of the results via e-mail but I never recieved an e-mail. Does this just mean that I did not recieve the scholarship or is it possible the results have not been sent yet? Thanks,

anon

Hi Anon -

I am guessing it doesn't mean yes or no definitively.  I hope you will hear back from them soon, but I am not sure if every candidate hears back or if just the candidates who recieve internships get a response.  I would recommend checking in with your recruiter on your scholarship applicaiton and hopefully they will be able to tell you one way or another.  Sorry about that! I wish I could tell you for sure!  Best of luck!

Liz

Will do Liz, thanks for the response.

anon

Few points here and there:

1. Yes, many people do not apply because it seems frightening. Imagine, you send your resume along with 13k other resumes or so a month. How will you be detected, even if you have skills? For college students, its different because Microsoft comes to you on campus.

2. The hiring process may not be as smooth sometimes. In college, after my first interview, I was supposed to hear back after 2 weeks. After 3 weeks I asked for the results and received an automatic email saying I was denied. 2 weeks after that it turns out that I passed the interview but my interviewer didnt give the results in time, and I was on my way to Seattle.

Giving better and timely feedback is the one area I see where MS could improve. But considering how busy recruiters can be, how many people MS hire, the opportunity and the possible reward at the end, I say it is understandable and definitely worth it.

3. Microsoft is at the bottom of U.S. citizens' list? Wow, interesting. I come from a good public university here in the US, and the top company for pretty much anybody is either Microsoft or Google. Microsoft gets a bad rep, true, but so many, so many want to work for them, because it is still one of the most (if not the most) prestigious tech company out there. Hey, maybe I was just in a completely biased part of the country :).

It is interesting to see how people say 'Microsoft is the last resort' or ‘Microsoft is the Great Satan…’ As a proud future microsoftie, to me that sounds like a kid’s argument :\

During my student life, I have met several technical people all around the world who worked at Microsoft in different roles. I can tell you they are talented are pretty damn smart. Most importantly, in general, they are not arrogant, they are honest, friendly and they have a life. In fact, last year Microsoft employees made more charitable donations than any other corporation on the entire world did. That doesn’t sound too evil.

Either way, Microsoft is a business made of individuals, just like Google or Apple. Obviously, every business seeks to succeed, which probably means outselling the competition. What is the difference? Honestly, I don’t think google search engine or gmail source code is open either. But again, Google’s logo has more colors ;)

In short, I think Microsoft is about improving people’s lives and potential with constructive products and ideas. It’s all about the people. Developers Developers Developers Developers.

Okay, super-long post ahead.

Timothy:

I think I see what you mean now.  While there can be top talent both domestically and foreign, Microsoft can ensure that it gets all of the foreign talent, while the domestic talent can go elsewhere.  I don't think Microsoft is really at the bottom of the domestic list, but I think it might be fair to say it's a bit higher in the list third-world countries.  I'm afraid I misconstrued your original point at first.

LFP:

Thank you.  I'll answer the immigration question first:  I don't actually know yet how it's happening.  I received an email asking whether I needed legal assistance, and, given that I really have no clue, I said yes.  So far that's as far as we got (we're still hammering out a start date).

As for the interview process:

Short answer, very professional and about what I expected -- including going long and a slightly nefarious trick at the end :).    I interviewed for SDE.

To put it into context, I'm graduating from a major University (University of Toronto).  Basically, the first-round seemed fairly standard and not at all intimidating.  I had to try twice -- once in the fall, and after being refused I was again contacted after a bunch of other Microsoft hires apparently recommended me.

Instead of flying me to Seattle, a group flew over here to Toronto and interviewed the 36 of us over our Reading Week (think like a Canadian "Spring Break", in mid-February).  My interviews were to go from 12:30 - 4:00.  They took us to dinner the night before, and also held a phone conference to give us interview tips (I couldn't catch that call).  Promised to mail all of us, make it or not, free copies of Vista Ultimate (apparently they would have brought them, but had border issues -- I guess the high retail price could cause customs problems).  This was pretty good, although I imagine I would have been quite a bit more distressed if I had to fly to Seattle and do so during a time that was not my week off.

The interviews were quite nerve-wracking.  I know my stuff -- I say this with confidence, not arrogance.  However, I interview *terribly*.  Somewhat socially anxious at the best of times.  I think it helped that I knew a couple people who were also interviewing there (although not very well -- a former TA and somebody I'd taken some physics classes with once), and so I could chat with them between rounds of interviewing.  The recruiter people there were friendly enough, too -- even showing off via youtube those funny but ironic videos about how Microsoft would do a crappy job marketing an iPod:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeXAcwriid0.  I'm pretty sure that was made internally by Microsoft to show how they had to improve.  That atmosphere helped to take some stress off.

There were three interviews.  They began with a couple quick "just checking you aren't a moron" questions and then proceeded to a main question, which was a problem that you essentially talked through interactively, and at the very end you wrote a bit of code.  When I made a slight error with a search-caching question, they asked a seemingly unrelated question which made me realize my mistake and I fixed it.  The most interesting one was where a man asked me to "probably" find out who won an election very quickly, while never giving an incorrect result (taking a long time if I have to).  He began it by describing something that was true, and explaining how implementing that algorithm wouldn't come up with the right answer, so I had to figure out what would.

After 3 rounds of interviews, I cooled my heels in the main area, thinking that I did well in the first two but kind of put-off by the third.  The deliberations went WAY overtime and at about 5:30 or so I was one of the first pulled out to hear our results, and the result was:  a fourth interview.  That nearly broke me, I was exhausted and thought I was done.  But I also think I did better at that last interview than any other.  I was later told that they all liked me but all had concerns about my nervousness during interviews, and basically did the fourth one to see if I could hold up under pressure.  And I did.  But I didn't know that until about 6:45 when I, the last one waiting in the room, was called out to hear my results (When I got back from the last interview was one other person still there -- one of the guys I knew, who didn't get the job ultimately).

I have to say, I'm not really a big fan of the whole "keep him 4 hours extra and spring a surprise interview on him to see if we can break him" thing, but I understand why they did it and I made it through that anyway.  I was quite amused when I realized the second interviewer gave me a question which, after a moment's reflection, turned out to be equivalent to the main one from the first interviewer.  I'm sure they did that on purpose, not least because once I started anticipating his next questions the guy said "alright, you caught me, let's move on to something else entirely".

After that, I was courted by the Live Search team and the Internet Explorer team, who both actually extended offers (I'm taking it with IE -- tough choice, and I use Firefox and Google at home).

So like I said they did job offers (or "not a right fit" speeches) on the spot.  However, it's taken about a month to get down to the business of picking a start date (partly my doing -- I wanted some time to think about the offer vs. Grad School, and also to finish interviewing with Google)

To contrast this, Google has phone interviewed me many times, and lately I've just gotten radio silence from the recruiter (I did mention that I started interviewing with Microsoft, and since then he tried to reschedule an interview for later, and then vanished completely).  A friend had to fly down to San Francisco and hated it, although from the sounds of it the interviews themselves were in the same vein.  Google phone interviews were far harder than Microsoft's screening, though -- things like finding the number of trailing 0's in the factorial of a number as efficientcly as possible (IIRC, I managed what amounts to O(N/5 log N/5) time).  Also, Google's first phone screen was for the wrong job.  The guy told me so but said he'd interview anyway "just in case" and then asked so many questions about the internals of Unix/Linux that I had never heard of that my head just about exploded.

I have to say, I actually had fun with both interviews.  There were no "puzzle questions" per se, but in a way, the technical questions amounted to puzzles that were somewhat entertaining to solve.  I guess the fact that I actually enjoyed myself probably shone through.

All airy stuff, reality is that when you pull in too many sheep on the boat, it doesnt matter if a few fall into the river. I was so passionate to work for MSFT and was an intern at some other location some time back. I thought of doing an intern again, this time at Redmond. The recruiting process sucks! They interviewed me on site and gave a positive response on the same day, but no reply came until 50 days. Yes its 5 followed by a 0.  They said the group has some problem and I will need to re-interview with another group and worse, this time I was hooked with a group I was hearing for the first time. This way the *perfect* hiring practices kill your interest and still this blog talks big stuff. Anyway, with the love that these experiences blossomed inside me, I am joining the other big ship. Good bye .

About a month and a half ago I was dreading going to my on-campus MS interview, I thought to myself, "I know  I won't get the job, so whats the point in going and letting them kill my self esteem?" On the advice of friends and family I went and actually did well and a little while later I was asked to come out to Redmond for more interviews. I knew that this time around I would be weeded out fast, but I figured that going through 3-6 rounds of tough interviews will help me in my endless job hunt after MS rejects me. I gave it my best shot and turns out I just accepted an offer yesterday.

Little Engine,

Congrats and Welcome!  It's so great to see! :)

Liz

I was also interviewed at Microsoft about a year ago. After 6-7 rounds of interviewed i did not get the job.

I have to say those interviewes were actually fun and I wasnt disappointed  at the fact that I did not get the job.

The fact that disappointed me a little bit is that i wasnt given any reason for this decision. Recruiter told me that Its company policy that they do not disclose any additional details about the interviwes. I just wanted to know what went wrong and if I can improve on my efforts next time.

Thanks

Lav

There are too many typos and grammatical errors in Haider Raza's feedback.  He needs to utilize Microsofts' spell check often if he is actually an employee.  

If he is, how could they miss all those grammar mistakes.  If I were the employer and interviewing this person, I'd have to recommend he get back to basics and do some polishing up on the universal language "english" and brush up on his spelling.

Good day,

Miss. Carol Bostic

Administrative Assistant