Sales Specialist Review

At Microsoft, I have been given a lot of responsibility as well as respect from my team which I have valued hugely. You are not limited to your job role and can move around the business to face different challenges. There is a big emphasis on learning and development which is really useful as an early-in-career.

My team, my manager and my peers across the business have made me feel at home. Everyone is willing to help and offer advice and support to ensure you make the most out of the year. I will miss my team massively and hope to return in the future. Regardless of seniority, people always look out for one another.

Everyone at Microsoft is valued and measured on their level of support of others. All colleagues actively try and help one another as this is part of the culture. There are a lot of different stakeholders and so there are many mangers and senior colleagues who you can find to mentor and support you at Microsoft.

You are in charge of your own calendar, so what you do is entirely up to you. This means you need to be very proactive finding areas of the business to throw yourself into. This means you can be as busy as you like. Different job roles have different levels of flexibility, sales is quite busy from the get go.

I was in charge of 30 customers over the course of my role. I hosted events, both internal and external facing. I had to hunt this responsibility down myself, and without being self-motivated I would have struggled with responsibility. The roles offer great flexibility, so you can work in the way that best suits you.

I have learned an enormous amount about sales strategies and processes, channel models of business and the differences between public sector and private sector sales over my time at Microsoft. It has really bolstered my degree with relevant practical experience. It has helped me decide where I want to aim my career and aspirations.

Stunning offices across London and Reading, however as everyone can work from home there are very few people in the offices apart from Monday. The working from home privilege outweighs this. Most early in career people are in the office as it is important to make the most of the networking opportunities.

Very well organised, I was allowed to choose what areas of the business I focused on in the first few months. Once decided, I was given a clear set of work to complete over the year yet given enough flexibility to do what I wanted. HR operation was very professional during the recruitment process.

Hundreds of free qualifications for all employees that will stay with you for years. HR host training that covers behaviours as well as skills required for the job. We had some great onboarding as well as training from your team on your role. You are allowed to speak to anybody in the business and shadow and learn from them.

There are plenty of great careers at Microsoft across an array of areas.

56 interns, 10 interns in sales. There is a very big community to make friends with.

Reading is a very classic English town. It has an average student night out, good fun and quite a few bars but nothing overwhelming. Lots of restaurants as well. It is quite expensive, expect £5 a pint and approx £500 a month for a decent room. Train to London is best part of £20.

Reading is a very classic English town. It has very average student night out, good fun and quite a few bars but nothing overwhelming. Lots of restaurants as well. Purple Turtle is the best all round bar, with a great outdoors, shisha and two floors of music. Revs a a close second for me.

Endless numbers of sports clubs and social clubs. There are even many work projects that take place outside of work, whether that be toastmasters or Microsoft global conferences. There are lots of communities and societies that allow early in career employees from the UK to get involved with other EIC people from the USA and EMEA.