A Look at Interviewing with Microsoft

I was recently notified that I was invited to interview with Microsoft, having sent in my resume a couple weeks back.

The interview was for one of three internship positions they are offering:
- Program Manger (PM)
- Software Development Engineer (SDE)
- Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET)

Being geared toward entrepreneurial activities, I decided that the Program Manger position was the best fit for me. On the Microsoft website they described the Program Manger:

Program Manager (PM)
As a Program Manager intern, you’ll get to help drive the technical vision, design and implementation of next-generation software solutions. You’ll transform the product vision into elegant designs that will ultimately turn into products used by Microsoft customers. The PM intern helps manage feature sets throughout the product lifecycle, and you’ll have the chance to see your design through to completion. You’ll also work directly with other key team members including Software Development Engineers and Software Development Engineers in Test. Program Managers are advocates for end-users, so your passion for anticipating customer needs and creating outside-the-box solutions for them will really help you shine in this role.

Basically the Program Manager deals more with interacting with people. Whether that be the customer to get feedback on what is expected, or the software development engineers to elaborate on what code needs to be written, or the marketing team to see if a particular feature is even worth implementing. I decided to go with this rather than the Software Developer Engineer role. I’m much more comfortable interacting with others and developing a overall design and seeing a product/service implemented. The SDE is undoubtedly more geared towards writing code for various specifications.

It helps that I have a sound understanding of writing code and developing applications that allows me to perform in a role  such as this. I have the technical know how to design the application while taking into consideration what the software developers would ultimately be coding.

So I sent  my response back in, along with an updated version of my resume. They replied  back a couple days later with a time and date for my interview.

The Interview:

They stated to dress casually, as that’s how most Microsoft employees dressed. So instead of suiting up in my jacket and tie, I went with a more casual button up and jeans. As I walked up to my interview location, I noticed a good amount of people were in suits (interviewing with other companies), but my recruiter greeted me sporting a casual attire as well, so all was good.

I sat down with the nice recruiter and we made small talk about how bad parking was, and then we began the interview.

She started off asking why I was going after the Program Manager position. I gave a response similar to what I talked about above in choosing to go for Program Manager. Citing my entrepreneurial nature and experience in designing applications.

She asked a couple more questions about projects I have worked on in the past, examples of how I had worked with a team. I’ve had a lot of technical experience designing software and presenting the finished product to people, so I was able to cite a lot of examples with that. I talked a bit about some of the business ventures I have done, such as designing websites for small businesses and individuals. Also  I talked about the latest SMS service business I have been working on, and how I am going about developing and implementing it.

After the more general questions were asked she tasked me with a few exercises. The first was to design a kiosk that allowed people to create custom wristwatches. I suppose she was testing my ability to design a product/service and how to go about implementing it. So on paper I began plotting out a kiosk centered around creating your own custom wristwatch. While doing this I was speaking aloud to let my interviewer in on my mindset.

The second task involved a recruiting question, wherein I was hypothetically tasked to contact a candidate for interview within the next 10 minutes, but his resume did not supply a phone number. I started listing out all the options of possibly contacting him, like emailing, looking online for any websites that listed a number, contacting his university, or previous employers for a number. I’m guessing this was aimed at seeing how well I could solve a problem, and which routes I would exhaust in trying to achieve my goal.

After this, she asked some questions as to which Microsoft products I was interested in working with. To which I answered about my interests in mobile and web products. She  also asked what was the most innovative software application I had been using lately. Here I talked about how Google Wave was a new and fresh application that I had been using recently, mainly for its collaborative nature. We spoke about how Microsoft would be responding with a competitor to Wave, and then presented me with the question of how I would I go about improving it. For this I spoke about how a collaborative environment could be supplemented by a video conferencing interface so  that you could talk to your peers while working together on a project.

The interview ended with a couple questions I had, such as what a typical day for a PM intern was like, and what projects interns had worked on in the previously. Her answers further confirmed my interest in this particular role as it involved seeing a specific feature through its design and development. She also stated that some interns were given a chance to pitch their ideas for features, which was of particular interest to me.

Final Thoughts:

There weren’t any actual coding problems given in this interview as I thought, instead it was more focused on a design and management point of view. Still, there were quite a bit of technical related questions posed, and I’m sure further interviews will incorporate programming specific questions.

As far as things I missed, I didn’t get a chance to talk about experiences from my Mountain Dew Brand Rep role. I would have liked to highlight my ability in working with people, setting up events, and designing a strategy around what people were likely to respond best to.

Overall I thought the interview went well, I had the opportunity to elaborate on my skills and experience, as well as respond thoroughly to the questions and tasks given to me.

Now all that is left is to wait and see if I stood out enough to get a follow-up interview.

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A few links of interests concerning this article:

An inside scoop of what its like to work at Microsoft, interview prepping, and more:
- Microsoft JobsBlog

Information about Microsoft Careers:
-  Microsoft University Careers

Internships offered @ Microsoft:
- Microsoft Internships

Here is a great video highlighting interns at Microsoft:

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