Program Manager applicants have rated the interview process at Microsoft with 3 out of 5 (where 5 is the highest level of difficulty) and assessed their interview experience as 50% positive. To compare, the company-average is 69.5% positive. This is according to Glassdoor user ratings.
Candidates applying for Program Manager roles take an average of 60 days to get hired, when considering 2 user submitted interviews for this role. To compare, the hiring process at Microsoft overall takes an average of 45 days.
Common stages of the interview process at Microsoft as a Program Manager according to 2 Glassdoor interviews include:
Phone interview: 50%
One on one interview: 50%
Here are the most commonly searched roles for interview reports -
Applied through a referral, had a phone interview then flew out to seattle for on-site. Very well organized hosting and interview process. Really made me feel valued. Took a lot of trouble to ensure that the visiting experience was good, organized a tour of seattle, had a rental car, comfortable hotel, led me smoothy from interview to interview on campus. Even sent a gift basket in the mail after I got home. Very professional and gave me a really good impression of the company on the whole.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
All fairly standard product questions: What is a non-high-tech product you love? Talk about an app you really like and how you'd improve it.
I applied through college or university. The process took 6 months. I interviewed at Microsoft (Seattle, WA)
Interview
Applied online and was contacted by email by a recruiter designated to my university. Interviewed on my campus, about 45 minutes in length. I was asked to design an app that delivered personalized news to the user. The question, obviously, could've gone on as long as the interviewer wanted, so it became more of a conversation or discussing the features and briefly (pseudo-code) describe how I would accomplish them through a coding perspective, although I was never required to write actual code. Then was invited to interview in Seattle. The team I interviewed with there was extremely technical, and I found a disjunction between what I was expected to be able to handle, as a PM. It was extremely technical. I was asked to write 5 different programs and was barely asked questions about managing program schedules and being able to communicate details from a customer perspective, which was highly emphasized on the PM job description and during my first interview.
In the end, it was clear that the gap between my ideal PM role and that was interviewed for was too large, however I was offered a less technical role that still applied to a Computer Science major and accepted.
I applied through college or university. I interviewed at Microsoft in Nov 2013
Interview
After the first round interview in school after career fair, they flew me to Seattle for the on site interview. The process was rather long, with four one hour spanned interviews