About a week ago, I asked one of my friends employed by Microsoft to submit my resume to legal. He spent a good deal of time trying to find the right person, and eventually he found a Penn State recruiter that told him MS was only recruiting for core tech positions, but from my resume, it looked like I could be a good match for a Program Manager.
Initially, I told him thanks but no thanks. After thinking about it for a little while though, the idea seemed intriguing. Client interaction and working closely with developers. Seems both interesting and suiting to my skill-set. I can’t say the thought didn’t occur that it would probably look great to IP firms (seeing as how the IP litigation job hunt could be better). In addition, though, it could be something that I would enjoy doing on a daily basis. Imagine that?
For those of you not familiar with coding interviews, they’re generally very dissimilar to law interviews. There are a few of the standard behavioral questions, but the doozies are the brain teasers. Of course, if you’re a geek like me, you like that kind of thing. My friend had suggested that I read How Would You Move Mount Fuji to prepare, which is a neat little story and a collection of brain teasers that have shown up in Microsoft interviews. Amusingly, I read as much as I could before the interview (I got it the same day) and stopped about five pages before the brain teaser that I got in the interview was explained. Oh well.
Because it has become customary to blog the interview questions, here are the questions that I was asked.
1. Tell me about your coding experience.
2. Why Program Manager?
3. Tell me about a time where you had a problem in a group, and how you solved it.
4. Tell me about yourself.
5. What’s your favorite Microsoft product?
5.5 What would you add to it?
6. Have you heard the problem about the lightbulb? (Me: No.) You’re in a room with three light switches. In the room next to you, there are three light bulbs. You can’t see the bulbs from the room you’re in. Figure out which switch corresponds to which bulb, and you can only go into the other room once.
7. Design a shoe for me.
That was it. It took about 30 minutes. If nothing else, it was sort of amusing getting out of the behavioral question routine for a while.
No related posts.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Very interesting. The light-bulb question is at least 5 years old. Glad to see they have moved beyond the number of gas stations in the U.S.
How does this compare to previous law interviews?
We teach both types of clients how to interview.
Jim
Well, it was entirely different than a law interview. I wasn’t really trying to sell my experience like I usually am with law interviews. The focus was more on convincing them that I’m smart and can think on my feet.