Monetization Analyst Review

This job has taught me a lot over the past year and really developed my existing skills and provided me with a whole new range of skill sets. Outside my business role, I have been fortunate enough to travel to Sweden and Paris for work presentations and training. Microsoft gave us 3 volunteer days per calendar year. This gave me the opportunity to take part in a CEOP Child Exploitation course on Internet safety, ran by Microsoft in collaboration with CEOP reps. This year have been so diverse and allowed me to not only enjoy my job, but to also take advantage of work shaddowing, travel and volunteer. Furthermore, we all received a Windows Phone 7! I find Microsoft to be a brilliant company to work for beacause they are all about the people, and push each individual to their full potential.

At Microsoft, you are not considered "the intern." From day 1, you are trained up and then seen as a full time employee of the company. For this reason, you become valued amongst your peers. From personal experience, I have been thrown straight into meetings from Day 1. I have contributed and thought-up ideas and then driven them until they become a best practice. My colleagues have valued me because I stick by what I believe in. Everyone I have encountered at Microsoft is always willing to help me out. Whenever I get stuck with a problem or need some further education on a product or tool, there is always somebody who is willing to meet with me for an hour over a coffee and explain to me the solution. I feel very comfortable working in this environment,

My manager and I have a 1:1 meeting every Monday morning to discuss my weekly/short/long-term tasks. He is an active listener and therefore always listens to how I plan to prioritize my work and find quick solutions. He is very supportive and will either support my ways of thinking or contribute to my ideas and help me find a better solution. The support network at Microsoft makes me feel very confident about working here. There is always a colleauge or even a team that is willing to help me. If I can't figure out a problem, I can contact my team (across Europe) for some help and guidance and they always come back to me immediately with great sources of information. Microsoft also have a great information support network. If my laptop stops working, or my internet connection is down, there is always somebody a phonecall away who fixes the issue in under 1 hour. The turnaround to fixing an issue is excellent and very supportive.

My role is an EMEA based role, so my projects reach-out to a wider constiuency. This means that my daily roles are pretty busy. I find the balance is very workable and I am able to meet the demand of the job as well as complete my own projects simultaenously. For example, I have my Monetization role with daily responsibilites, but I am also part of a wider project outside my "job title" called 'Young Britain Works.' This is a youth employment initiative whereby me and some other inters run the Facebook page and reach-out to 3rd parties to expand our fan base.

I feel like I was given a lot of responsibility, all of which I managed well. My manager gave me a lot of "high profile" roles (managing key projects). For example, I built a pricing sheet for over 4,000 products across 32 countries. This was a huge success and is now used by the employees of Microsoft Adveritising. With responsibility comes trust, and I felt like my manager saw that in me. I have taken on big responsibilites and even managed a new intern for a couple months. Microsoft has given me the confidence to cope with the responsibilites throughout the year.

I am an Accounting with Finance student. My role at Microsoft has been more focused towards the 'Finance' part of the degree. My role is a business analyst role, and I use financial instruments to measure the success of the busisness. However, I have been given a lot of training in Office programmes, including Word, Excel and PowerPoint. All of which will help me when I return to complete my degree. Most importantly, my Excel skills have improved massively, and I will be able to return to my degree in September feeling confident I can use Excel to help me in my disseration and course work. Microsoft allows you to reach-out to other teams and shaddow their work. In one instance, I was keen to understand how the budgeting process worked for the new financial year. My team gave a couple hours off each week to go and sit with the Finance team and look at the budgetary process. I found this to be very interesting and focues towards my degree. If I look at my role in particular, I have dealt with a lot of revenue, forecasts, budgets and economics. This is very closely aligned with my degree and has really enhanced my understandings. I sit in the EMEA HQ team, so I get to see the key decision making process every day. I get to sit-in on key business decision meetings on a weekly basis and understand how this type of business works. This is something new to me that I will take back to university and further education.

I work in a very open office environement where everyone is very focused. It is very socialable and Microsoft allow you to "hot-desk" which is essentially an opportunity to sit wherever you like if you so wish. If not, then you have your assigned desk and locker. However, I do find the open seating plan to attract a lot of noise and I can sometimes find it difficult to work. But if I look at it the other way, this enviornment makes it very easy for you to approach another team or individual for help.

I think my role was not very well organised. When I first joined, my hiring manager moved to the Swedish sub and I was allocated a new manager. However, this new manager got an internal offer to work in San Fransisco, USA. Two weeks into the job, I had no manager and all the team were on summer holiday. About 3 weeks later (still with no manager), my team returned from summer holiday and I worked along side them for a month before my new manager commenced work. Since then, it has been much more organised. On reflection, I think it was a good lesson for me and I taught myself new things. For example, during this time of no manager, I initiatied work-shaddowing, read-up about my role and trained myself on Office tools. I took a pro-active approach and made good use of my free time.

Microsoft is all about finding each person potential. I have taken part in training sessions in Sweden and Paris, all expenses paid for. Microsoft offer a "Work-Smart Wednesday" each week where you can sign-up for a session on "Advanced Excel" or "How to prioritize emails and work load." It is a very supportive enviorment and I have felt this has been the biggest impact on me.

I woud realy like to enrol on the MACH (Microsoft Acadamy for College Hires), Microsoft Graduate scheme. However, the compeition for this scheme is very tough and there are only 3 areas you can apply for, Technical, Marketing and Sales. Microsoft do allow you to return as a contractor is you are unsuccessful with the MACH scheme. I am looking to enrol on a Finance based scheme where my accountancy exams can be paid for by the company. However, I have had my job at Microsoft extended until the end of August.

My role is based in London along with another 10 interns. However, the remaining 74 interns are based in Reading. I feel like the social events were more in Reading than in London, simply because of intern living location. However, I have had great socail events with my team, traveling to Paris for cooking classes and staying in a luxury hotel, to going out celebrating with the London interns.

London is very expensive. I was fortunate enough to live at home, so my rent is a lot less than what the other interns are paying. In terms of socialising in London, including going for meals and drinks, it is very expensive. I think London interns should have been paid more (inc London weighting avg) than the Reading inters, as the living costs are extremely greater in London.

London is capital for nights-out. I am situated outside Victoria train station which is near all the top clubs and near the tube where you can access the top bars and clubs in 20minutes max! I have been lucky to get a job in London and very greatful.

All the outside activites were primarily in Reading. The London office is more of a "stop-off" for Microsoft employees who are travelling a lot for their job. Every day I see a new face whereas the Reading building is much more focused on the UK employees. The other issue is that the London office only consists of 300 employees whereas Reading has over 2,000 employees and so activites and sports teams are more frequent. However, London employees are always invited to the Reading activity events and sports teams.