Landing a Job At Microsoft, Part3: The In-Person Interview, Impress Them!

I know it’s been a while since the first 2 posts, but I’m finally getting around to writing the 3rd part of this series, which I hope is helping you, dear reader, to prepare yourself to get your dream job ;)

So, after writing your rock star resume, and after making a great first impression in your phone interview, you should be asked to do an in-person interview, or rather in-person interviews (as I had 4 of them ;) ). This is what you’ve been working for in the first two steps of the process. An opportunity to tell your story in your own words, to demonstrate your skills, to meet the people involved and to ask any questions YOU have.

Landing a job at Microsoft, Part2: The Phone Interview, Make a Very Good (first) Impression!

So, I’ve recently posted about the offer I got to work at Microsoft. Then, I started a 3 part series to talk about my experience getting the offer. The first one was about writing a good resume. In this one, I’m going to talk about the second step in the process: The Phone Interview.

In the previous blog post, I mentioned that writing a good resume is essential since it’s usually your first interaction with the company, and allows them to filter interesting profiles that match their requirements. However, as big companies get tons of resumes regularly, they usually have a second filter, and that is, usually, a Phone Interview.

A phone interview takes usually about 30 minutes, where the interviewer would call you by phone or using Skype. They introduce themselves, tell you how the interview is going to take place, then start going through the interview questions (more on that shortly). In the end, they’ll ask if YOU have any questions (more on that later).

Landing a job at Microsoft, Part1: The Resume, Catch Their Attention!

In a previous post, I talked about the job offer I got to work at Microsoft. This is the first of a 3 post series where I share my experience and some tips & tricks and resources that could help YOU do the same ;)

So, The first step is your resume/CV. You have to submit a great one, since it’s the first thing they’ll get to see of you (and of your work, since it’s something YOU produced).

However, and before going deep into how to present your resume, I would like to touch on something of the utmost importance. If you want to have a great resume, you need to HAVE a great resume. Confusing? not really. You can’t impress them with what you would/will do, and certainly not by faking it, so you better make sure to invest in yourself, and pack up a good deal of experiences and skills. This will also have the benefit of giving you more confidence in your interviews (more on that later).

Microsoft gave me an offer I couldn’t refuse!

So, I received some AWESOME news recently! An offer from Microsoft for an SDE (Software Development Engineer) position in its Online Services Division :D and as the title suggests, I couldn’t refuse ;)

As a result, I wanted to share with you, the different stages I went through in order to get this offer, along with some tips & tricks and resources that could help YOU land a job at the company of your dreams.

First, let me give you some context, and summarize the process, then I’ll try to give more details along with the tips & tricks in the following posts.

In the beginning of September, it came to my knowledge (through Facebook, oddly enough :P) that Microsoft was having a recruitment campaign in the MEA (Middle-East and Africa) region, and that there will be an event in Dubai from October 3rd to the 6th. The news mentioned the website “http://www.microsoft.com/university”, so I just went there and took a look around at the different “graduate” offers. It looked (very) interesting (duh!), so I decided to give it a try. I wrote a resume and submitted my application in the website. And waited …

Bug Hunt: Chasing an obscure AccessViolationException (Silverlight)

So, I’m working on my graduation project, using Silverlight 4, Prism and the MVVM pattern.

Now, for some context on my bug:

Baby Steps: CodeRush Plugin Development

    I mentioned in my previous post that I’ve grown quite some interest in CodeRush from DevExpress, and part of that is because of the plug-in model they have in place, which is pretty powerful, yet simple to tap into and develop refactorings, code-providers, etc.

    In this post, I’m going to talk about the first CodeRush plugin I’ve ever wrote! It has a funny story, actually, where I was watching this recording of a CodeRush Feature Workshop, and at some point in the webinar, an attendee asked a question about how would a particular refactoring be implemented. Rory, started talking about that, and how easy it would be, then Mark Miller said: “Well, I almost wanna right that right now! It's like, so easy to do”. I thought to myself: “why not?!, this is my chance! :D”, and I just stopped the recording right away, opened Visual Studio and started developing my first Plugin! :) Just to be honest, as Mark suggested, this is very basic, and simple. But, heck, it got me hooked! 

DevExpress CodeRush

So, recently, I’ve been having more and more interest in DevExpress’s CodeRush add-in for Visual Studio. I’ve had CodeRush Xpress installed for some time, but couldn’t use it well because of a certain performance issue. After fixing that issue, by disabling a couple of features that were slowing it down: I’ve been in contact via twitter with Rory Becker from DevExpress, and he gave me a lot of help with CodeRush, like using its powerful templates and so on. Since then, I found CodeRush to be very powerful productivity tool, and actually kind of fun also, and it helped me save a lot of time.

OK, enough with the not-very-important talk. Why am I talking about this anyway? Well, that’s because I’m going to try and post about the cool stuff I find out and learn about CodeRush. Also, since I’m following some DevExpress Webinars, especially some of the ones about writing CodeRush Plug-Ins, I’m going to try and post about that, and comment on some examples showing the development step-by-step. CodeRush plug-in development doesn’t seem to be very hard, yet it’s very enjoyable.

Important links:

• DevExpress
  
• CodeRush, CodeRush Xpress
  
• DevExpress Webinars
  
• CodeRush Community Plug-Ins

Make sure you follow @RoryBecker the DevExpress Community guy, @MillerMark the DevExpress Guru, and of course @AbdouMoumen the CodeRush novice (aka: me :) )