I applied through a recruiter. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Microsoft (Redmond, WA) in Oct 2010
Interview
Microsoft's network engineering team does a fast, efficient, day long (five hours) team interview. You may well meet three other candidates there for the same round of interviews in a different order. In my case, the people I interviewed with asked a variety of intelligent questions - it was a good technical interview without any of the legendary MS questions. Watch yourself at lunch. On the whole, expect a thorough interview about networking with intelligent people and leave the rest for the fit.