Software Engineer applicants have rated the interview process at Microsoft with 3.1 out of 5 (where 5 is the highest level of difficulty) and assessed their interview experience as 66% positive. To compare, the company-average is 59.7% positive. This is according to Glassdoor user ratings.
Candidates applying for Software Engineer roles take an average of 18 days to get hired, when considering 38 user submitted interviews for this role. To compare, the hiring process at Microsoft overall takes an average of 32 days.
Common stages of the interview process at Microsoft as a Software Engineer according to 38 Glassdoor interviews include:
One on one interview: 26%
Phone interview: 18%
Presentation: 14%
Skills test: 12%
Drug test: 7%
Personality test: 7%
Background check: 5%
IQ intelligence test: 5%
Group panel interview: 4%
Other: 2%
Here are the most commonly searched roles for interview reports -
I applied online. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at Microsoft (Cairo, Cairo Governorate) in May 2019
Interview
There were a 90 minuets online test, that consists of 2 problem solving questions and 4 MCQ questions.
After that, I had 2 on-site interviews.
The first interviewer failed to break the ice, and seemed to be inexperienced enough, she asked a classical problem solving question, but stayed silent through the whole problem, and hardly confirmed the solution when I finished. After that, she asked a lot of machine learning related questions.
The second interviewer was very nice, helpful, and friendly. He asked 2 very good, fairly-hard problem solving questions.
Given a binary tree, calculate all the frequencies of the sub-trees sums. The sum of a sub-tree is the sum of its left sub-tree, its right sub-tree, and its own value
I applied online. I interviewed at Microsoft (Melbourne)
Interview
After submitting an online application, I received a HackerRank assessment after passing the resume screening stage, then I was rejected after completing the assessment and did not proceed to further interview rounds.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
The assessment consisted of two LeetCode-medium-level coding questions to be completed within 75 minutes.
45 mins technical interview with a member of their San fran team. Very relaxed and informal but questions were focused and lots of follow ups. Easy to schedule as was over video conferencing platform
Straightforward technical loop overall, with strong interviewers at every stage. I genuinely enjoyed the in-depth conversations around technical challenges and algorithmic problem-solving — the entire process felt well-structured and genuinely engaging.