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So my interview day started off not being able to find parking at Building 19 (Recruiting). Knowing my way around campus I ended up parking at Building 24, which is where I used to work. Spent 1 hour with a HR recruiter who, if I get an offer, will have to negotiate with in terms of compensation and benefits. After some normal chatting and questions (like why Microsoft, what to expect blah blah blah) she sent me on my way to Building 16 for my Sharepoint interviews. She offered to get me a recruit shuttle, which I kindly rejected since building 16 is right across the street and I felt stupid taking a shuttle across the street when its faster to walk across.

I waited 15 minutes or so for my first interviewer to show up, who was a Senior PM Lead. Some standard questions about my previous MS internship, and then the fun questions:
– code analysis: given a piece of code, tell me what it does and how to optimize it (it was a recursive Fibonacci Number function)
– design a UI to update server information in a 3-tier architecture. I get to ask questions to the interviewer, who can take on the role of customer/end-user/marketing/dev/fellow PM.
I guess I could have answered the design question better, in that I could “foresee” the client’s needs and solved it all at once rather than just solving the problem presented at hand 😐
Second interview was a lunch interview, so we went down to the cafe and bought food. During the process I actually met a previous co-worker and had a little chat. Afterwards we went back to the interviewer’s office and he asked me a design question…
– design an alarm clock for the visually impaired
I think my answer was really normal and standard for this question…the interviewer was very quiet throughout so I don’t know if he approved or not…at the end I don’t think I named anything special that blew him away, so wasn’t exactly feeling great after the interview. What is worse is he sent me on to another building for my 3rd interview.

Let me explain how MS interviews generally work (at least according to folklore and myths…I’m sure they officially deny this). You’re pretty much guaranteed 3 interviews, but whether you get to go on depends on your performance. Hence the later your interviews go for the day, the higher the chance you’ll get an offer (unless you blow the last interview). If everything goes well, then you’ll get an “as applicable” interview with some high up manager that can make the hiring decision. So really, the key to know if you will get an offer is to see if your last interviewer was someone high up in the ranks, and see how well the last interview went.

My 3rd interview was in building 36 with the Office Shared Services team. Seems like the job they do is rather abstract…. the interviewer couldn’t even tell me what team I will be placed on. I guess since Office 12 (2007) was just shipped a few weeks ago there has been some re-organization going on and people don’t know what they are working on yet. Question asked here was:
– design an online collaborative tool for students to collaborate on a document in a group project.
I guess this question went better. I kept on thinking about some hyped up blog / wiki and applied it to word documents. Afterwards the interviewer sent me back down to the lobby to wait for the next interviewer – I was scared he would get me a shuttle and send me back to Recruiting (which practically means no offer). Next interviewer was another PM who was nice and friendly…. and I really impressed him when I “aced” the first question. Here is what was asked…
– Do you use Office? Which part of Office do you use most? (I answered Word)
– Would you consider yourself a normal user, power user or elite user of Word? (I answered just above power user, as people do ask me about how to use Word)
– How would you improve Word? (Hohoho as an avid Word user I KNEW what I wanted with Word…I mentioned a feature that was lacking with Print Preview and he didn’t believe me, so he started Word 12 (2007) and the same feature was lacking….and then I explained my reasoning and use case for that feature and he was like yes that would be a good feature….oh pwned that question)
– Name two technologies / gadgets that you would combine together and be able to market it (eg. cell phone and garage door opener; I ended up talking about Smartphone + Car…hoho O2)
– Logic Question: If a throw a rock from the boat I am in into the lake, does the lake’s water level (relative to the shore) rise, fall or stay the same?
After this interview I was sent back to the lobby to wait for the next interviewer. As I was sitting on this red bench I saw the sunset from the window (It was around 4pm by then)…and I felt happy because I know I would have a 5th interview and the later / darker it gets when I’m done the better.
The 5th interviewer gave the best Microsoft PM interview by far. I think Microsoft PM interviews should be done much like he does. He asked me some questions about my past experience and what I worked on. Next thing I know he started to show me gadgets around his office. The first thing he showed me was this digital binary clock (which my housemate actually has one). I told him I have seen it before (otherwise I think he’ll ask me to guess what it is) and he said he had a question for me. I said I hope this isn’t the question “Explain this clock to your mother” (which was actually a real situation my housemate encountered) and he got a very good laugh out of that and said that was a good question =P. But what he asked me was actually very easy – he wanted to know the number of invalid combinations the clock can possibly represent. I started to count the number of invalid combinations and then gave up and did it “backwards” instead: Total Number of Combinations – Total number of good combinations (which = number of seconds in a day). He was impressed, I think. He asked me some design issues involved with the clock and asked me how I would test it. And then he showed me this Ambient meter thing he also had. And then we went on doing some major geek talk for an hour. Really….just random geek talk. If you can keep up with the topic then you know you’re quite geeky and will be a good fit for MS culture…we talked about stuff like multicore applications (I mentioned Intel’s new quad core was announced earlier this week), future of compilers, distributed computing, etc. etc. This interview ended my day.

I was hoping for a 6th interviewer which would be a good indication, but by then it was already 5:30pm. 5 interviews was a little less than I liked but its still fair. Anyhow I went out to a nice dinner with my previous manager and then went back to my hotel, and went to find my friend. I asked my friend to check the role of my last interviewer to see if he was high up enough in the ranks (to see if he was an “as app” interviewer).

It turned out his job title was “Director of Program Management” and he directly reports to a CVP 😐 So I guess he is quite high up there….high up enough to make a hiring decision.

So right now I feel quite happy about the interview and just hoping for the best…waiting for a call / e-mail some time soon.

Thanks to everyone who prayed for me and my interview!