I am excited to announce that I actually have plans for the summer! I was plenty busy last summer but didn’t have any real plans. I was initially hoping to work as a classroom assistant for SSEP, but the program was canceled due to COVID. SSEP stands for Summer Science & Engineering Program and is one of Smith’s pre-college programs. You can read about my experience as an SSEP participant here. I also had the backup plan of continuing my work in the Cunningham Center which you can read a little bit about here. In actuality, I spent the summer at home working on our family farm and doing independent learning with free online resources. To read more about my summer learning, click here. This summer, I will be an Explorer Intern at Microsoft! (Due to COVID, it will actually be virtual). This is a very exciting opportunity that I will be sure to document here on my blog. This post will be about the application process.
In addition to the Microsoft internship, I also applied to a few research programs in human-computer interaction, wireless technologies, and robotics. Yeah, all over the place I know. Those applications required one or two letters of recommendation, a transcript, and an essay or a few short answer questions. In terms of deadlines, they ranged from January 15th to February 22nd. At this point in time, I am yet to hear back from the programs. Two of the programs I applied to are Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REUs) funded by the National Science Foundation. To search for REUs in various fields of study, click here. It’s worth noting that these programs are very competitive and primarily accept rising seniors.
Explore Microsoft is a 12-week internship that introduces first-years and sophomores to software engineering and program management. The application process was fairly streamlined with clear communication along the way. I submitted my résumé in early January and was invited for an initial interview just a few hours later. In retrospect, it is very shocking that I got invited to an interview as my résumé was lacking the key experiences that came up in my subsequent interviews. Specifically, my Interterm computer science job and my personal coding project of Tascal (a task management app). Fortunately, in scheduling my interview I submitted an updated résumé that included my computer science job. I didn’t include the computer science job in my initial résumé because it had literally started the day before. As for Tascal, I didn’t really know how to add it to my résumé and didn't think it was perfected enough to be a showcase of my skills. With that said, in my updated résumé, I added Dart (the underlying programming language used to code Tascal) as a programming language I know.
My initial interview, the so-called phone screen, was actually a video call on Codility. Despite being on Codility, there weren’t any coding questions. It was mostly behavioral questions with one somewhat technical design question. It is a good thing that I added the computer science job to my résumé because it was pretty much the only thing from my résumé that my interviewer asked about. She also found my experience working on a farm to be interesting. I was definitely nervous during the interview, but as the program is for first-years and sophomores the interviewers know that it’s probably your first technical interview. Overall the initial interview was a positive experience. It was also a great chance to learn more about the program as my interviewer (a current software engineer) had herself been an Explorer Intern during college.
My interviewer recommended me for the next steps, but I was placed on a waiting list to get another interview. I was also asked about my team preferences in case I got to move on to the final round of interviews. This was fairly general as the options were AI/ML, cloud platform, cloud tools & services, operating systems, apps & frontend, and security. I ranked apps & frontend first followed by operating systems and the two cloud options. A week later, I got off the waitlist and received an invitation to the final round of interviews.
The final round of interviews consisted of two interviews via Microsoft Teams. In a normal year, students are flown out to Microsoft for these interviews. Prior to the actual interviews, there was a brief meeting with the other candidates and two recruiters. During both interviews, I was asked a range of questions about my experiences working on a team and general interests in technology. One of the interviews included a simple coding problem that I coded in Java via Codility. (I could choose whatever programming language I felt most comfortable with). During both interviews, I was able to talk about Tascal and some technical challenges I had to work through. Tascal also helped demonstrate my interest in software. Given that one of the questions was about personal projects, it’s a bit surprising that I was moved along in the process without them on my résumé. With that said, the prerequisites for the program are just an introductory computer science course and a semester of calculus.
The next business day, I got a call from a Microsoft university recruiter. I was elated to learn that I had been offered an Explore internship. I was also informed that my interviewers thought I should be considered for the software engineering internship. This meant I had the option to do one more interview. It was the perfect scenario because if I didn’t pass the interview I would still have the Explore offer! This greatly took away the stress. Furthermore, as I definitely didn’t expect to get the higher internship, I wasn’t too worried about it. The final interview didn’t go that well as I wasn’t really prepared for it. While it was disappointing not to receive the higher offer, I was successfully still successfully accepted into the program that I actually applied to. It is nice going into the internship knowing that I was a really strong candidate rather than just barely getting into the higher internship and thus feeling underprepared. From the official acceptance, I had two weeks to accept the offer. Before officially accepting I met with my engineering advisor. (You can read more about advising at Smith here). I was also put in touch with one of my interviewers to ask more questions about Microsoft and the program. Below is a timeline of my Microsoft application process.
Initial Interview Invitation: 1-5
Interview Waitlist Notification: 2-2
Final Round Interview Invitation: 2-10
Final Round Interviews: 2-19
Accepted to Explore: 2-22
Official Explore Offer: 3-1
In summary, I am beyond excited to have the opportunity to intern at Microsoft. I won’t get an exact team placement until the start of the program, but I know I will be working somewhere in the experiences and devices group. As the start date approaches, I will formalize my goals for the summer. My overarching goals are to develop my skills (both technical and collaborative), explore the field of software engineering, and learn about Microsoft as a company.