behavioral interview "Tell me about a project you worked on where the requirements changed midstream.

What did you do?" "Tell me about a time when you took the lead on a project. What did you do?" "Describe the worst project you worked on." "Describe a time you had to work with someone you didn't like." "Tell me about a time when you had to stick by a decision you had made, even tho ugh it made you very unpopular." "Give us an example of something particularly innovative that you have done that made a difference in the workplace." "What happened the last time you were late with a project?" "Have you ever witnessed a person doing something that you felt was against comp any policy? What did you do and why?" Example stress interview questions: Sticky situation: "If you caught a colleague cheating on his expenses, what woul d you do?" Putting you on the spot: "How do you feel this interview is going?" Popping the balloon: (deep sigh) "Well, if that's the best answer you can give . .. " (shakes head) "Okay, what about this one ...?" Oddball question: "What would you change about the design of the hockey stick?" Doubting your veracity: "I don't feel like we're getting to the heart of the mat ter here. Start again - tell me what really makes you tick." Microsoft Questions What types of projects (academic or otherwise) have inspired you in the past? What are some self-directed missions that may have influenced your career direct ion? Did you have a moment of epiphany when you KNEW what you wanted to be when you g rew up? How does Microsoft fit into your vision? What are some things that excite and motivate you? What are some examples of poorly/well-designed software? What makes the software this way and how would you change it? Design a cellphone for a blind person. Design a music system for a car. What are the features? Draw a picture. Design a GPS navigation unit for a hiker Design a communication device for Canadian park rangers. Design a remote control for an automatic window-blind system. Design TV Remote Control with Two Buttons. Design a coffee maker that will be used by astronauts. Design an alarm clock. Design an alarm clock for a blind person. Design a search function Design a website for a library Design an ATM for children What method would you use to look up a word in a dictionary? What are examples of poorly designed software? Design an instant messaging system. I am your grandmother. Describe what MATLAB is to me. How would you explain what a database is to a 5-year-old? How would you explain computer networking to a kindergarten kid? What is your favourite software, and how would you improve it? Write code for an electronic messaging board. What happens when a user logs on? Develop an algorithm for selecting objects in Visio. Tell me about a time when you made a decision and later found out that it was in

correct. What did you do to resolve the issue? Suppose you are one week away from the product shipping date and discover a bug in your software. What do you do? You have a linked list and don't know how long it is; how do you find the middle of it? How would you test a keyboard? How would you test a pen? Write code for finding a duplicate in an array. Write code that returns the length of a string without using any built-in functi ons. Reverse a Singly Linked List with and without using Recursion. Determine if a Binary Search Tree is well formed. Reverse every word in a String (abc def becomes cba fed). Write a function that returns the angle between the hour and the minute hands of a clock, given input of the time. Write a function that takes a string consisting of numeral characters and return s all possible alpha character strings of same length as input that correspond t o the keypad of a typical telephone. Imagine you have a closet full of shirts. It s very hard to find a shirt. So what can you do to organize your shirts for easy retrieval? How would you test an elevator? How would you test a vending machine? How would you test a program that takes in two points and outputs the distance b etween the two points? Test the Windows scroll bar. Switch every pair of words in a string ("ab cd ef gh" becomes "cd ab gh ef") Write the function for strstr function (finding a substring inside a string) Reverse the order of words in a string ("ab cd ef gh" becomes "gh ef cd ab") Write the function for string comparison. How would you test it? Write a function to zero all duplicate values in an integer array. How would you test it? Write a function that compares two strings and returns a third string containing only the letters that appear in both. Find cycles in a singly linked list, using minimal storage. Shift all elements of a circular array by k bytes, using no extra memory. For an array of size n, print all pairs that add to k. (then, do the same thing with a sorted array)