Hello I’m Samantha and I’m from Aston University where I’m studying combined honors in Business and Psychology. It has been good at university learning all the theory but the main thing I have been looking forward to is my placement year where I can get some real experience. I’m lucky enough that Microsoft have given me the opportunity to spend that year with them!

The first week was an induction week where all the different departments within Microsoft gave presentations and explained what they did. Half way through the week we had an outdoors day, where luckily the sun kept shining! This involved playing human table football, inflatable volleyball and building catapults! Then the week was finished off with an end of year “All hands” meeting. Where Gordon Frazer told us how well the UK had done – so well we were position front and center at the yearly MGX meeting in America. Also my department was given a special award for being sub of the year! So that made me very excited to be working with them! Then it was back out into the lovely sunshine for a BBQ by the lake.

Following week was straight down to proper work. I was introduced to my department – Developer and Platform Evangelism (DPE) and my team, the audience marketing group. There are three audiences – developer, academic and IT Pro. I work with one other person for the IT Pro audience. This means that straight away I was told I would be doing the job of a full-time employee (FTE) as there were only two of us there was lots of work to be done.

I got straight into the deep end and was given a campaign to run. I am heading up the optimised desktop campaign which is Microsoft’s vision for making people productive anywhere, managing risks through enhanced security and control as well as reducing cost through streamlining PC management. This is capable through having Windows 7 enterprise, IE8, Office 2010, MDOP and the concept of virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). As you can probably guess by now there is a huge amount of acronyms used here and just learning those was a serious hurdle. Though now I do have to remind myself not to use them when talking to someone outside Microsoft! The second obstacle was all the technological knowledge. I spent the first week reading up on the technology to understand how it all worked. With my audience being IT pro’s I realized I would never know as much as them, but I was determined to know enough to at least be able to hold up a conversation with them!

Once I had got my head round that I got stuck into the campaign. This involved planning out all the high level messaging that I wanted to be saying and then drilling down to the specific that I wanted to be saying throughout the months. Due to budget restrictions most of the marketing is done digitally – as I found I would get to know our TechNet website very well! I am now in the process of waiting to heard back from the agency I briefed to see what ideas they have come up with for a landing page to clearly get our message of the optimised desktop out to the over 1 million IT Pro’s!

I also get to work closely with our evangelists who know everything there is to know about the technology and go out and speak to the audiences. They are great to have a chat with to find out what the audience is thinking and what they want. They are always putting together fun videos and pod casts to teach the audience how to use and deploy the new technologies. Together with them I am going to create an event where they run a series of live meetings which all get put onto a website. Then there will be questions asked with prizes given out to the IT Pro that blogs back the fastest correct answer. This is an idea to create something fun for IT Pro’s to get them involved in our technology.

Last year was a big launch year for Microsoft with W7 coming out. Having seen the adverts on the TV, I wanted to get involved with a launch this year. I got a place on the Office communicator v-team and was giving the responsibly of owning the IT Pro readiness plan. Therefore I will be running several events for IT Pro’s to come to where the new launch will be demonstrated so they can get a real understanding of the steps forward taken with this launch. Luckily as part of the team I am already running the new software and it’s so good, I’m really excited about our audience seeing it!

As well as my day to day job in the office Microsoft gives me a lot of opportunity to take on stretch projects. One I took on fairly early was to be the leader of the Millennials v-team. For those that haven’t heard of the term millennials before they are the generation that were born from 1980-2000. Hence they have grown up with technology all around them enabling them to be digitally native. The workforce culture and environment is changing and they are driving this change. So I wanted the opportunity to lead the team and educate others on what the workplace of the future will be like.

All this sounded very daunting when I started but due to the great network of support it soon became not so daunting! When I first got there I was set up to have weekly 1-on-1 meeting with Phil who has been in the company for over 18 years and knows everything about the IT Pro audience. They told us at the beginning that everyone in the company would be very happy to meet us for a quick cup of coffee if we had any questions. I at first didn’t fully believe this, but I can say now – full of many cups of coffee that it it’s true. People from all over the company are happy to spend time 1-on-1 to help me develop a network of contacts so that I always have someone to ask for help when I need it.

Find out what our Guest Bloggers are getting up to. Throughtout the year we will be following the progress of our Guest Bloggers as they find a placement or keep us updated as to what they are doing on their placement. Click here to read all entries from our bloggers or click here to meet them.

Well the first week is over and what a week it’s been! I’ve seen a lot of presentations, met a lot of people and learnt a lot of things.

We started off the week with HR Presentations and the necessary, and moved onto more of how the Microsoft structure works as there are a fair few departments. I got some very good tips from senior managers including the UK Managing Director!

With 70 other interns it’s quite difficult to get to know everyone, but I think I’m nearly there. Staying in a hotel for the first week really helped everyone mingle with each other. We also had an activity day playing inflatable volleyball, human table football, archery and laser pigeon shooting. All put on for us interns, working in teams allowed us to get to know each other better.

We also went to a company BBQ on campus grounds, and enjoyed some good food with other interns and the rest of Microsoft, great way to end the week! And had a couple of nights out during the week for interns, so there were plenty of opportunities to get to know everyone.

The whole process of induction week is managed by current interns, so is really well ran as they know what they are doing! Also it feels relaxed as the interns aren’t going to be your managers and won’t judge you for asking silly questions as they were in your shoes this time last year.

I would advise asking the company you work for if you can stay in contact with the previous intern as they will be a great source of advice. Some of the new starters still have the previous interns working with them so they get a good handover period. Brilliant start to the year, have a feeling it’s going to be a good one!

Find out what our Guest Bloggers are getting up to. Throughtout the year we will be following the progress of our Guest Bloggers as they find a placement or keep us updated as to what they are doing on their placement. Click here to read all entries from our bloggers or click here to meet them.

Name: Sarah Melrose

Age: 20

University: DeMontfort Leicester

Course: Marketing Management

Company: Microsoft

Job Title: Academic Audience Marketing Manager

“Hi, I’m Sarah, studying Marketing Management at De Montfort University in Leicester. I’m just about to start my most important year so far at uni, and hopefully the best, and begin my placement at Microsoft in Reading. Microsoft is so huge and there are so many different departments and roles it can be confusing, but my role is a marketing one working on the student programme and other media projects.

I’m due to start at Microsoft on Monday 6th July, but the first week is an introduction week getting to know more about Microsoft and each other as I’ll be sharing this experience with 70 other interns! For the first week all interns are staying in a hotel, kind courtesy of Microsoft, no doubt there will be lots of things going on, including getting lost around Reading…!

My advice if you are still looking is keep looking! Something will turn up when you expect it, and be open to talking randomly to anyone. On the train on the way home from a Sara Lee interview I got chatting to another lady who works at O2 (both companies in Slough) and she did her placement there and offered to pass on my CV, so you never know who you can meet! I also did temping work after my exams working for a web development company, and after chatting to the owner he asked me to keep in contact for the future. So opportunities are always there, you just have to be pro-active with searching.

As for my placement I’m starting soon, moving into a house with 5 other interns at Microsoft, and will certainly keep you posted!

Sarah”

Find out what our Guest Bloggers are getting up to. Throughtout the year we will be following the progress of our Guest Bloggers as they find a placement or keep us updated as to what they are doing on their placement. Click here to read all entries from our bloggers or click here to meet them.

Name: Colin Davies Age: 21 University: Nottingham Trent University Course: BA Business (Strategy and Entrepreneurship) Company: Microsoft Job Title: IT Pro Audience Marketing Manager

Hello guys,

My name is Colin and I used RateMyPlacement.co.uk a whole load when I was researching into placements. Don’t start work until July 6th but I thought I’d do a quick intro and a bit of advice/build up to how I got myself into the position I am in now…

So first off I’m currently writing this in a really sweaty travel agents in Danyang, a ‘small’ city in China… it has a population of about 1million… I’m here travelling for 3 weeks with a Chinese friend I met at Nottingham Trent Uni. While he’s booking our train I thought I’d come on and start my blog.

I don’t want to sound like your dad but you’re probably on here looking for advice like I was 12 months ago anyway. So there’s my first 2 bits of advice in securing the placement YOU WANT, and not any old one someone has shoved under your nose:

1) Experience stuff – go travelling, join club/societies and committees and get work experience. Generally fill your time after 6th form and at uni with as many different experiences as you can. Because while academic work is important and at the end of the day, it’s what you’re at uni for; it’s NOT everything… And although I’ve done my fair share, uni isn’t just about boozing and partying it up either… while it is a lot of fun its never going to float anyone’s boat when looking at your CV or assessing you in an interview.

I know the employers I’ve been in contact with were far more interested in the stories I had from outside of the classroom rather than the ones inside. That’s what they look for, raw skills that you use everyday in life that they can utilise in the working environment. This does not include perfect referencing and sadly being able to complete the drinking game centurion won’t get you far either. But explaining how you got home from Bangkok after losing your passport will so get out and do stuff, even if it scares you.

2) Network – Networking is not for men with grey hair and business suits its for everyone and its really important that if you want to reach your potential that you start talking to as many people you can right now. Not just friends… but tutors, international students, even people on planes (I was offered an interview from a guy I met on a plane).

How many times have you heard about someone saying hello to another human being and them replying ‘piss off’!? Never, I hope. So don’t be worried about starting a conversation with someone you don’t know… It WILL benefit you more than any 1st class degree from any uni in the world. I wouldn’t be in China right now having experiences like eating freshly beheaded eel or driving up the wrong side of the road into oncoming traffic with a crazy taxi driver beeping his horn and swearing at people out the window if it wasn’t for networking…

Back to the placement thing. So after I get back from China I will be moving to Reading to start my job at Microsoft. I will be employed as an IT Pro Audience Marketing Manager and although it sounds pretty impressive I’m yet to get to the bottom of what that entails, I’ll keep your posted.

I’m pretty stoked for it though; I’m living with 6 other interns in an awesome house next to 7 other students so it should be a blast. At the Microsoft offices there are many perks, free ice-cream next to the WIFI enabled lake. My office had a free coffee shop, x-boxes and a pool table located around the parameter. Best of all though I’ll be working in an environment where they encourage you to be entrepreneurial and support you in working independently, however if you need help there’s dozens of ambitious colleagues spread all around ready to help on any given project.

There it is then, a bit of advice and what I’ll be doing in the coming month. I’ll be writing another blog once I get to the bottom of what I’ll be doing at MS but in the mean time I’m off to eat some more weird stuff and attempt to navigate China’s massive train network.

Take it easy… Colin