I applied online through my career site, and also went to a resume building session and dropped off my resume, never expecting to get an interview.
I flew to Seattle, and everything was taken care of. Hotel, rental car, plane ticket. The first day you're there, you are able to explore Seattle. You are also invited to a recruiting event where they rented out a bowling place with OPEN BAR for the applicants to relax and get to know their recruiters. The applicant pool there was quite intimidating. Everyone is from the top engineering schools in the US. MIT, Stanford, UChicago, Maryland, UCLA Berkley, GA Tech just to name a few. And here I am from the University of Florida(lol). I was able to meet some program managers and talk to them about what they do.The next morning we were swept away in a MS shuttle into the interviewing room.
The interviews consisted of four 1:1 interviews for full time and intern positions. All of my interviews were very technical. My first interview was with a PCB designer for windows phone, and coincidentally my current internship consisted of me doing PCB design for high frequency applications. He asked me a lot of questions pertaining to my work, and will really make you think.
Ironically, my second interviewer was a lead designer for PC hardware, which I talked to the night before at the intern event. We had a nice conversation, which then led into the technical question. It was primarily based on Microprocessor applications, and I was able to work it out even though I had dropped the class that semester.
My third interview was with the Lead Xbox Designer, who had about 20 years of experience under his belt. Really nice guy, but this time the interview didn't go as well. He asked me a lot about pcb design, signal integrity, and pcb design. I couldn't get the signal integrity question right, but he was able to help me work through it by applying easy to understand analogies and concepts. I felt pretty bad about this interview but kept my chin up.
My last interview was with another MS employee who was exceptionally bright in circuit design and programming. This guy grilled me so bad in circuit design. The interview consisted of two problems consisted of circuit analysis, and op amp transfer function derivation. I struggled a lot on these questions and felt that I bombed this last interview.
I was pretty depressed after the interview as I felt it went horrible. After all the interviews, we were told to hang out in the library and eat lunch while the interviewers deliberated. One by one, the full time applicants were pulled inside the office to be given their results. Finally, the interns were pulled one by one. I was pulled in last, and was not feeling so confident, because of the 12 applicants that were there, only one had been given a solid "yes". Two other applicants were given "maybes". I was the last one to be pulled in, and was extended an offer, which I accepted on the spot.
P.S. - To be honest, I answered a lot of questions wrong. But it's important to voice how you work our your problems aloud and show them what you're thinking. Also, there was no lack of talent there in the applicant pool. But what I did notice was that some applicants were lacking social skills. I do not think that I had the most intellectual prowess of the group, but I believe that my prior work experience and social skills were able to boost my chances in the deliberation.