Kristian Kristensen’s Blog

Yesterday at 11:10 PM I hung up the phone, thereby ending my first interview with Microsoft, the phone interview. I’ll describe how I got there and what the experience was like in this post.

Some weeks ago I got an email from a recruiter at Microsoft asking me to return my CV and answer some questions. After figuring out how she got a hold of me — she had got my contact details from the local ADE in Denmark, Henrik W. Hansen — I did as asked. She quickly replied that since my graduation is not until June 2007 they would postpone any interviews until the fall.
And apparently the fall came on Thursday last week, when I received an email from another recruiter who wanted to make an appointment with me for a phone interview on Monday. I wrote back a big “Confirmed!”
I hadn’t expected to hear anything from Microsoft until later in the fall, when I would also be in West Virginia, but anyway it was good timing that the interview lay on Monday and not closer to Friday where I’ll be leaving.

With the appointment in place I started to prepare for it. Bascially I wanted to get a better idea of what the purpose of the interview was, and the types of questions I could expect to be asked. For that purpose the JobsBlog proved great! I’ve compiled some links in the bottom of the post that proved helpful.
I reviewed the CV I had emailed Microsoft and my answers for their questions, and made a print of it to use during the interview. I compiled a list of the projects I had done in University with pointers on what was interesing and might make good conversations subjects or be good to mention during my answer. I found some examples of questions they might ask, and thought about what my answer to it would be. The reason is that some of the questions are really abstract and big, and it can be kind of difficult to answer them from the top of your head, at least intelligently. Anyway, I made notes of my thoughts and also made a print out of that.
Some of the questions I thought about were:

• Why do you want to work for Microsoft?
• What are some self-directed missions that may have influenced your career direction?
• What are some things that excite and motivate you?
• What are your strenghts and weaknesses?

I found them at Wikipedia.

So Monday came, and as the interview time approached I got pretty excited/nervous/”all the feelings you get when you want to do well”. I took all my print outs, a pencil and a writing pad, and water and found a quiet placae in the house keeping the phone nearby. Time passed… The time for the appointment came – and went. 10 minutes after the phone rang!
After the obligatory “How are you?”, “Fine. And you?”, the real interview started. The idea is that they ask a question, which is deliberately abstract, vague, big, broad, whatever, and you answer the best you can. Meanwhile the recruiter takes notes which he/she uses later to figure out if you’re interesting for Microsoft to hire, and what group you might fit in.
I got asked some standard and obvious questions “Why do you want to work for us?”, “You run your own business, tell me about that?”, etc. “Pick a software product, you are to come up with 2 ideas for improvement, what are they, and why do you need them?”, “What’s a stack?”, “How would you test a stack?”
In this respect it was a good thing that I had found this blog post from a guy who have also been through an interview.
As the interview was nearing its ending, I was told that depending on the product group visiting in Denmark in some time, I would be matched, and possibly be set up for interview. I’m from Denmark, so its the International Recruiting team at Microsoft that is supposed to recruit me. X number of times a year they visit around the world and interviews potential job candidates. With them they have members of a product team with them, that does the technical interviewing. This means that your profile as a candidate has to match the interests of the product team visiting during recruiting. For me that means that a very C/C++ heavy product team wouldn’t match my skills or interests, therefore I probably won’t we invited for interviwing if such a team is to visit.
However, luck has it that as you know I’ll be in the US for a little over 4 months starting this Friday. I told it to the recruiter, and that fact was just great! This means that it will be possible for them to match me up with more or less any product team in the US, and not just the one(s) selected to visit Denmark. In short: better chance for me of getting matched with a product team, thereby enhancing my chances of getting hired.

So next step is for me to send an email to the recruiter when I arrive in the States, and figure out my precise address and phone number. With that the process will continue, and hopefully they will be very interested in hiring me and schedule a second more technical interview. I keep my fingers crossed.

That pretty much concludes the first chapter of my Microsoft Interview. Hopefully there will be many chapters to come, and preferably a happy ending.

The dreaded “HR Interview” Part 1: The Phone Screen
Ace that phone interview!
Do you have any questions for me?
Frequently Asked Questions
Microsoft interview
Interviewing at Microsoft
Blog post: Microsoft Application (Phone Interview)

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