Some thoughts on interviewing at Microsoft

During this time, I've noticed a few common themes.  No one should take this as any sort of guidance -- general or otherwise.  It is simply a few things that I wanted the chance to bring out.

Note that like other interviewers that I've talked to, I want you to be successful -- both in the interview and in your job.  Each of the items below are 'survival traits'.  They are aspects of the interviewing process that reflect (IMO) behavior that makes it much more likely that a person will be successful at Microsoft.

First, a fairly obvious and common point: be interested, and take an active part, in your interview.  I know that part of what I'm always looking for is passion -- what does the person believe in?  How strongly are they interested in what they've been doing (or what they want to be doing)?  In fact, the one piece of advice that I got before my interview was "have opinions".

Second, know what you know and admit what you don't know.  No one knows it all.  The question is how you act when you hit the boundary of what you do know.  Do NOT claim to be an expert at something you are not.

Third, be willing to dive into deep detail.  Especially if you've been in the industry for a few years, I'll be interested in your range -- how abstract can you go, and then how deep, and how comfortable are you in swapping between them?  I'll be honest: I'll go over your CV and look for topics that we both know, and then I'll do my best to find out just how comfortable and articulate you are at that topic.  Oh, and if you're an expert at transactions we'll probably have a GREAT discussion :).

Fourth, do be prepared to code on the whiteboard, and do expect that it will be outside of the area for the job you're interviewing with.  That's on purpose.  It's not an IQ test or a gotcha test -- I'm looking to see how you react to a problem that you probably haven't thought a whole lot about, how you approach it, and how you think it through.  I've used different coding problems over the last 2 1/2 years, one of which only one interviewee completed.  There were a lot more than one that got my thumbs up though.

These are all trying to probe at behaviors that are fairly common here.  We routinely are pushing the edge of what we know and know how to do.  In the Indigo group, it is very common to realize that there's an area that you don't know, but someone else does, and to seek them out to collaborate on a solution.  Finally, I'm in meetings on a regular basis that will veer from high level architecture to how it looks in the code and back.

This should be enough to get started. :)