Technical Account Manager Review

It's now been 2 months since I left Microsoft and I still feel so incredibly lucky with the experience that I had. The people were so lovely and welcoming, the type of work I was doing was interesting and my work/life balance was still good. I enjoyed my placement to the extent that I often felt like I wasn't really at work!

There isn't a culture that placement students are "interns" and therefore unworthy- we were viewed as a colleague like any other and often highly valued for our ability to bring another viewpoint to things. There is a really good system of giving feedback so my colleagues helped me develop hugely.

I was really incredibly lucky with my manager- they were supportive, genuinely interested in me and took on the role of being a "mentor" rather than a traditional employee/manager relationship. I would however say that this seemed quite mixed amongst my intern cohort, with some managers that didn't seem to fully understand the responsibility of taking on an intern and what was involved in the intern programme. Overall, most people I know where completely happy with their manager and I was really happy with mine.

As with all internships, the amount of work I had to do varied from week to week but generally I was very busy. It's worth adding that I was always busy with things that I genuinely wanted to do and enjoyed, rather than being busy with boring work. There was also a culture of "if you need more work, you should speak to your manager"- there was always more projects to be involved with if you were proactive in finding them.

The level of responsibility given depended hugely on how much responsibility you wanted, asked your manager for and could prove that you were capable of handling. I was quite ambitious in what I wanted to do and was lucky to be involved in really exciting projects. I don't know of anyone in my cohort who wasn't working on real projects with real customers and responsible for certain outcomes.

Some of the skills I learnt I didn't even KNOW were skills before I joined Microsoft. I went in wanting to get better at public speaking, presentations, networking....but ended up with such a varied range of projects that I got to improved my ability at so many things which will serve me well in any professional environment.

The offices in Reading are huge, always filled with people and have amazing facilities. There was a relatively relaxed atmosphere in my office, where it was completely acceptable to go for a walk and stretch your legs or go for a coffee with a colleague- there was definitely no one watching over you.

Very well organised. A very structured initial recruitment process, onboarding process, regular intern events, events at Christmas and the end of the internship. The only thing that felt a little bit disorganised was the process of converting to a graduate at the end of the placement- it caused a lot of anxiety to a lot of people.

Microsoft heavily invests in the interns, with training always available in every topic under the sun and dedicated days just for training. I know so much more about technical topics, partly due to the availability of training and partly due to the "learn it all" culture that Microsoft has created.

Hugely appealing and many of us interviewed for graduate positions in a variety of roles at the end of the placement. This provides a great opportunity to go back to the final year of Uni knowing you have secured a graduate job, I am so excited to go back in September next year!

Definitely. There were just over 60 interns in my year, lots of whom had moved to Reading and were living in houseshares so there was still a relatively "student" feel to the social life. With such a big group of interns, everyone found a group that they got along with.

I am from Reading so I lived at home, but for those who moved to Reading they found that living in Reading is very expensive especially in the areas close to the offices and often they are student houses so not particularly luxurious! It's quite an expensive night out too, but still rent and living expenses are nothing compared to London.

Reading has a good nightlife with something to suit everyone. Because there is such a big uni in Reading, there is always a night out going on. For people that were from London or who had been to Uni in Bristol or Leeds, the nightlife did not impress so much!

Yes- to an extent. There are various clubs at Microsoft because it is such a large community and I know there is a well established football team. There are regular socials amongst the interns and my colleagues were very sociable. It definitely decreased throughout the year though, as people became busier.