I’ve been working as a contractor to Microsoft for over four months now and am about to take on the interview process for a full time position. I feel confident but at the same time I’m not too sure how I’ll feel on interview day.

I decided to do as much prep and research as possible before my interview. The first thing I did was to search the internet for stuff like data structures and algorithms that I wanted to memorize.

Next I looked for books on data structures and algorithms and I ran into a book on preparing for a programming interview. I bought the book and started reading. Link below.

I wanted to talk to other devs to find out what their interviews were like. I have no friends that work at Microsoft so I called up my recruiter who is awesome and got me the current contract position I’m in (let me know if you want his contact info). He set up meetings for two other programmers who had gone full time at MS after contracting through him. This was extremely helpful and I am grateful for their advice.

One of the guys recommended the programming interview book although I already had it and had read 1/3 of the way : )

I’ve noticed that many devs don’t make their first FTE interview. They say the main thing is to be relaxed and ask lots of questions. Other things are:

-be relaxed - repeated because it seems really important
-ask lots of questions - repeated because it seems really important
-don’t worry about weird questions like ‘why is a manhole cover round’
-focus on technology, team work, personality
-if you like the interviewer there’s a good chance they like you
-talk as you work out problems so they can see your thought process
-display a passion for the position or technology you’re interviewing for
-if you are confident of an answer then also elaborate if you know more about the topic
-if a question is hard or you are unsure at all, ask for more details
-if the interviewer runs out of questions, ask them questions about their job
-know why you want the job, you will be asked
-be confident about your skills
-don’t fake anything you don’t know (it’s ok not to know stuff)
-don’t answer quick, look for more than one way to answer and talk about multiple answers
-ask for conditions and background before trying to solve problems
-look for boundary or edge case problems in your solutions
-relax
-be honest
-search the internet for interview brain dumps

some tricky tech questions they were asked

-binary math questions - it’s ok if you can’t answer all just talk through it
-parse and convert roman numerals to decimal equivalent
-validate binary search tree
-implement compression schemes

The first link is a book that has really good info and really gets down to the fundamentals of programming in terms of interview questions. Data structures, algorithms, array manipulation and string manipulation seem to be the key items along with threading, recursion and OOP.

http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Interviews-Exposed-Secrets-Programmer/dp/047012167X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1199940602&sr=1-1

http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=18472
http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=18718
http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=19171

http://discuss.fogcreek.com/joelonsoftware/default.asp?cmd=show&ixPost=116513

http://www.sellsbrothers.com/fun/msiview/#Some_of_the_Interview_Process_Filmed

http://weblogs.asp.net/emaino/archive/2005/02/20/376865.aspx

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/WhatGreatNETDevelopersOughtToKnowMoreNETInterviewQuestions.aspx

http://members.microsoft.com/careers/mslife/insidetrack/resume.mspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/mswanson/archive/2004/08/21/218216.aspx

Another good link from a co-worker:
http://www.careercup.com/show/?co=a767af1f-f0cd-4149-bbc9-b7b73d5f84d1