Ex nihilo nihil fit (Alter Ego)

My Interview with Microsoft

Victor Hurdugaci — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 17:24:32 GMT

This post is for those who want to apply or have already applied (but not finished the interview) for a Microsoft Job. The recruitment process is quite similar for everyone and consists of a few steps.

Application
E-Mail Interview
Phone Interview
On Site Interview

I will tell you my story and how I went through the four phases.

1. Application

My blog's title (Ex Nihilo Nihil Fit) means "Nothing Comes Out of Nothing". You can't get a job at Microsoft by not doing anything - this is true for anything else. The first step you need to complete is the application process.

For this, many options are available. You can...

... apply online on Microsoft's Careers website as I did
... send your CV to different e-mail addresses (there are some dedicated e-mails for different positions)
... apply through some 3rd party organization (job shop, campus recruitment, job agency, etc)

On MS Careers you just have to post your CV and choose the job you want. That's all! No recommendation letter, no cover letter, no nothing. Of course, not every CV passes the selection process. Here are some tips for improving your resume (worked for me):

Don't write it just before applying! Write a draft version, wait a few days and then review it. This way you will find a lot of mistakes and stupid things you wrote initially. If you review it immediately after writing, your mind will not be criticism oriented and will just ignore mistakes. Repeat the write-wait-review process as many times as necessary, until you find that the review revealed no mistakes.
After you did the final review and the CV is bullet-proof, ask others to review it. They will definitely find inconsistencies and mistakes and this will make you feel stupid. This is good because will open your eyes will make you go into an 'I want to improve' mode. You'll try to correct everything. After you come up with a modified version go again through steps 1 and 2. Repeat this as many times as necessary. [Special thanks to Lucian Sasu, Nadia Comanici, Andrei Ciobanu, Monica Balan and Lavinia Tanase for reviewing my CV!]
Make it short and give only relevant facts. Initially, I come up with a 5 pages CV because I wrote every single technology with which I worked. There were a lot irrelevant things, I wrote Windows Workflow Foundation just because I played with it for a few days. I added extensive descriptions for every project, made a personal details section (name, birth date, address, etc) of 1/2 page. Others suggested to cut everything that was not necessary. You don't need to give extensive descriptions, just add a few words. For example, I wrote "VS Image Visualizer - Visual Studio 2008 debug visualizer for images" and added a link to the project's page - you submit formatted andcan embed links.
Add something that makes it different. I don't know if this makes a difference, but I added some lines to separate items just like in the picture below. Definitely Microsoft gets thousands of CVs per day. You need something special.
Don't lie! Tell exactly what you did and what is the proficiency level of your skills. For example, don't write "Advanced" for UML if you don't know the difference between composition and aggregation. Be realistic and don't under/over estimate yourself.
Use the spell chick. Make sure everything is written in correct English and there are no grammar/spelling mistakes. Noddy likes a WC with grammar mi takes. You mght fail just because of that.

Once you completed your CV, choose the job that suits best your needs, apply and wait... The waiting is a problem because all these big companies like Microsoft, Google, Mozilla, Apple, etc. will contact you only if they find something interesting in your application. If you're not suitable, then no rejection is sent.

I applied for an Intern Software Development Engineer position at Microsoft Redmond. I cannot apply for a full time position because I want to finish the master program on time, in the next summer - an internship is just what I need.

2. E-Mail Interview

January 20, 2010. Two months since I submitted the CV. I wasn't hoping anymore that MS will contact me, when I got an e-mail titled: "Victor Hurdugaci ES DK" from Holly Peterson saying:

Life at TUDelft

Victor Hurdugaci — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 23:30:52 GMT

It is hard to believe that six months passed since I was stepping, worried, out of the terminal in the Schiphol airport, in Amsterdam. Meanwhile I went home once but this is another story. What am I doing at the Technical University of Delft? Well... It's simple: "I'm busy". I work, now, on 4 projects, all software related. Mostly sure you are not interested in what I do with distributed algorithms or domain specific languages. So, I'll present the most interesting project. The QR.

The QR is a Quad Rotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicle developed by another department from the University. We are struggling to do doing the software that will make it fly. The software is made of two parts: one part running on a PC and another running inside the QR. The device is not yet advanced. Currently it has the minimum necessary in order to stabilize in air (gyroscopes, accelerometers and engines). In future, cameras, wireless interfaces and other gadgets will become available.

Today was an important day because we had the first engine test. Read more and see the movie>>

The Game Of Life

Victor Hurdugaci — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 09:06:22 GMT

A few days ago I was getting bored and decided to to something fun. Yes, you can get bored at TUDelft... Well, actually you don't get bored, you get sick of all the work you have to do (apologies to anyone offended by this). So in a quest of something fun but still productive I found Conway's Game of Life.

Game Of Life

The Game of Life is not really a game because no one plays it. It is a cellular automaton, a zero player game in which the only human interaction is the initial setup. Then the game evolves by itself under the constraint of some rules, until it gets to a stable state.

Read the rest of this entry >>

To visualize or not to visualize

Victor Hurdugaci — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 21:21:31 GMT

I have released a free open source debug visualizer for Visual Studio.

It allows developers to inspect the content of System.Drawing.Image objects, graphically, in debug mode. Compared to other visualizers is a little more advanced because it allows zooming and panning and it gives information about the pixel's color under mouse.

If you work a lot with images you will find this really useful - I made it for me in the first place because couldn't find something similar.

Check the project page and provide feedback or propose new features. Project page: http://victorhurdugaci.com/projects/vsimagevisualizer/

11-11-11-11 Contest

Victor Hurdugaci — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 11:19:22 GMT

I have 3 prizes for my readers: 1 license of HandyBackup Pro and 2 licenses of HandyBackup Standard.

In order to avoid duplicate posting follow this link to join the contest: http://victorhurdugaci.com/11-contest/

There you'll also find why "11-11-11-11" :)

1, 2, 3, 7!

Victor Hurdugaci — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 09:10:29 GMT

Today is a big day: Windows 7 is here

Office Live Apps

Victor Hurdugaci — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 21:57:17 GMT

I wrote on my main blog a small review for Office Live Apps - the Google Docs alternative from Microsoft.
Read the review

Share OneNote notebooks with Live Mesh

Victor Hurdugaci — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 15:21:41 GMT

Read the article here.

100000+ Downloads

Victor Hurdugaci — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 12:25:01 GMT

I am proud to announce that SkypeGadget was downloaded more than 100.000 from gallery.live.com.

There is a problem with the posted date but I remember that I uploaded it on gallery.live.com at the beginning of 2008 (or late 2007). So, I think that it was downloaded 100K times in ~19 months.

SkypeGadget is a Windows Vista Sidebar gadget that allows you to control Skype. If you want to download SkypeGadget and/or get more info about it, visit the project page at: http://victorhurdugaci.com/projects/skypegadget/.

Software Craftsmanship

Victor Hurdugaci — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 13:43:40 GMT

Writing code and creating working software is not hard but writing quality code and creating valuable software is.

The software craftsmanship manifesto values:

Not only working software, but also well-crafted software.
Not only responding to change, but also steadily adding value.
Not only individuals and interactions, but also a community of professionals.
Not only customer collaboration, but also productive partnerships.

That is, in pursuit of the items on the left we have found the items on the right to be indispensable.

One can hardly doubt that the principles from then manifesto can be satisfied in other way than through passion. Of course, not all individuals involved in the process of software creation do their job with passion and dedication. Some do their job just because they need money or because they have some other interest and they really don't care about the final product. They create software because they have to and usually is bad software.