There is still 1 more week to go until leaving Romania for the US. I wanted to share some facts about the live interview, which I find useful for any potential candidate.
My phone interview was held in Warsaw, Poland. Microsoft took care of all expenses including airplane tickets, hotel booking and food. It was a great experience. I arrived at the Microsoft HQ in Warsaw about 10 minutes earlier than the planned start time and I’ve met there with 2 other candidates for the internship. After a couple of minutes, a lady came to brief us about the interviews. We’ll each be interviewing with 3 different people, one-on-one talks.
My first interview was with a lady named Holly, from London. I didn’t exactly understand what’s her job, but she was very cool. I cannot disclose the exact questions, but be prepared to answer general questions about your resume and projects, some intelligence and creativity questions and some algorithms. The questions are easy, but you must be prepared to develop interesting and new ideas on any subject they ask. A question which I haven’t been asked, but it’s very good to illustrate the point is “how would you test an elevator?”.
The second and third interview was with engineers. They asked me to write code on paper, but don’t worry, the bits of code are so easy that you cannot potentially make a bug there if you are at least prepared. Then, they might ask how you could optimize the code. They also care about the constant and not only the complexity! The guys could also ask about ways to test such a method. Again, be prepared to come with as many tests as possible. If you can, test it for all inputs. This is the only way to be 100% sure that it works on any case.
After the interview, I’ve played some FIFA on the Xbox with a guy from Bulgaria who was also there for an interview. But I tell you that the interview was really cool too. I really enjoyed the experience and learnt what to expect from an interview and how to prepare for it.
