Microsoft Program Manager Interview

Interview Details 1.) Met recruiters at university career fair/engineering day.
2.) Applied online through the university careers portal.
3.) Contacted to schedule a phone screen (within about three days). Screen was supposed to last 30 minutes but ended up lasting over an hour. Started with a resume review and behavioral questions. I was also asked two of the famous brain teaser type questions, a handful of testing/coding questions and multiple design questions. Was told I passed about an hour after the screen.
4.) Flown out to Redmond for onsite interview: consisted of five hour-long 1:1 interviews with various Program Managers/Directors and a hiring manager for the team I was interviewing to join. Questions ranged from resume review/experience questions to design questions of both a general nature (e.g. design a new in-car entertainment system) and related to the specific products/technologies that team was working with.

Microsoft's recruiting team works very fast (I had other offer deadlines and they were aggressive in accommodating this; first contact to on-site in Redmond literally only took about two weeks) and they take care of you if you make it out to Redmond: you'll stay in an excellent hotel near the campus and will have a rental car for the duration of your stay (up to three days). Parking, food ($75 per diem), mileage to/from your home airport and tourism expenses will all be reimbursed within reason. They also gave me free passes to the Space Needle and Chihuly Glass museum; you're encouraged to explore when you aren't interviewing.

If I have one (major) problem with the university recruiting process, it's the general lack of transparency and choice: unlike most other companies, you have zero say in which role you're selected for and what product teams you'll interview with and you won't find out more until the day you arrive on their campus (tech recruiting is extremely competitive right now and I have no doubt the campus visit is the biggest part of the sell--they don't want you declining the final round interview before they have a chance to get you on site). The team I was paired to was a pretty terrible fit for my skills and interests (and I was already wary about things I knew about Microsoft's internal culture, so I was very particular about this). I do suspect things would've been better for me if I wasn't working under 2-3 week time constraints due to my other offers.

Reason for Declining – Had other offers and didn't like the team pairing/work environment.