The process started off positively with an initial call from the recruiter, who was incredibly kind, professional, and supportive. She clearly explained the process and stayed in touch throughout, which I appreciated. After our call, I submitted my portfolio ahead of the next step (the HM specially requested for that), then an interview with the hiring manager. However, the interview with the hiring manager was a completely different experience. From the moment the meeting started, he said something along the lines of: I don’t know why we scheduled this meeting. This is a design position, and what I need is your portfolio. There’s no point in this conversation. That caught me completely off guard, especially since I had already submitted my portfolio prior to the meeting, as requested. Plus, I walked through my 2 projects and he's still saying like that... I was left confused and uncomfortable. Toward the end of the meeting, I asked if there was anything else he'd like to see. He responded by assigning me a small design test. Asked me to pick a random topic and design a few presentation slides. No deadline, asked to take my time and just send it over when I’m done. I took the time over the weekend to thoughtfully complete the task and submitted it via the recruiter. After that, I never heard back. No feedback on the design, no follow-up communication; just a generic rejection email one or two weeks later stating they were moving forward with someone more senior who had more experience. This was surprising because nowhere in the job description was it mentioned that they were only looking for a very senior candidate, and this information could have been shared upfront, especially before I invested time in multiple interviews and an unpaid design task. Overall, it was a disappointing and discouraging experience. While the recruiter was wonderful, the hiring manager was dismissive and unprofessional. When he said: "I don't know why we're having this meeting." I really wanna say, I don't know either and this felt disrespectful. Candidates deserve transparency, basic respect, and timely communication. I hope Microsoft takes steps to ensure that interviewers represent the company values more consistently, especially in roles involving creativity and collaboration.

I started a series of 7 interviews, including the hiring manager, recruiter, product manager, a team of designers, engineers and developers, creative director and back to hiring manager. the final round was presenting a few projects in front of the team