[ebrewste]

"Any technology they list on their resume is 'fair game' - they had better know it, and if you have direct experience in a niche technology that they list, grill them to see if they are being 'honest'"

Such a strange stance for MS to take (IMHO). I've got 20+ years experience in lots of different languages and different technologies. I've been looking for a new job and have been brushing up on skills for interviewing. I just don't think it's possible for me to be ready to be grilled by a current expert on 15+ languages that I've shipped high quality, production code. The flip side is to only list the three I can take a grilling on today on my resume? It seems like a pretty short sighted approach. Maybe they have moved on in this stance?

[smsm42]

Grilling may not be the best word there, but if you say you worked with language X, I think it makes sense to give you some questions about it to gauge how good you are with it. Some people stuff the resume by mentioning every language that they did for a toy project once in college, and then we don't want them to be put in charge of the project which requires deep knowledge of the same language. Better to find it out in advance. That doesn't necessary means that candidate will fail and not be hired - just maybe not for the project that requires the knowledge they don't have.

[lscharen]

Having done plenty of interviews, it's surprising how many candidates list every technology they may have touched for the briefest of moments. For me, "grilling" someone on something like a programming language is about determining if they've _really_ used it or not.

If a candidate lists multiple languages on their resume, I'll often ask them to do a compare and contrast -- what do they think are the strengths and weaknesses of the languages? What did you use language X for? Do you think language Y would have been better/worse/same to attack the same problem?

I'm not looking to trip them up, just find out if their resume is an accurate reflection of their experience.

[seanp2k2]

"I used it so I wouldn't need to rewrite the 300 proprietary internal libraries and dependencies our company also paid to write and maintain in that language" is probably a valid answer for many BigCo employees.

[EdwardDiego]

I just had an interview with MS, they seem to have a far better approach these days.

I was surprised that they approached me because the team works primarily in C# and Go, and I've been doing JVM languages mainly, and only a small amount of Go, but the interviewer emphasised that they want people who can learn and enjoy learning.

They then asked me to choose a language I know well and describe a strength and weakness of it.

It was a really good interview experience tbh.

[lloydatkinson]

Does MS have many remote jobs? I’m UK based and it seems most MS jobs are in the US

[EdwardDiego]

I'm not sure about many, this one is though.