Microsoft

We care about our people 

Benefits play an important role in your choice of employer. At Microsoft, we believe work shouldbe challenging, yet rewarding.

It’s vital that we provide industry-leading benefits to all of our valued employees.starting with a competitive salary, bonus, and stock award package, we continue to reward eligible employees based on their individual performance. However, the benefits don’t stop there. Here’s a snapshot of some of our unique offerings.

Graduate Benefits

European Operations Centre (EOC) Graduate Program 2012

Would you like to solve complex business problems in an international environment? Do you enjoy fine tuning processes and driving business forward? Do you thrive on being challenged?  Do you have an interest in business and technology?

Our EMEA Operations Centre is the largest operations centre outside of the U.S., providing not just manufacturing and distribution, but key support for all the company’s data, sales, and service activities. With 5.5 million orders and 26 million units shipped to 120 countries all over Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, EOC is a big operation. A strategic hub, even. We release, deliver, and support products to some 10 million customers annually, and generate around 40% of Microsoft’s total global revenue. So if you’re interested in being part of this expansive strategic function, then a career in operations is the right option for you.

In the Microsoft EMEA Operations Centre we have a passion for customers, partners and technology. We provide solutions to deliver more software to users worldwide by providing easier and smarter ways for businesses to acquire and use the software they need.

Our permanent Business Graduate roles typically include roles in Supply Chain, Business Operations/ Support, and Project Management. We are proud to be voted Ireland’s best workplace 3 years in a row.

We are looking for business (Commerce, Finance, MBS, E-Business, BIS, Supply Chain, etc) applicants who share our passion for customers, process improvement, innovation, and operational excellence.  We see our Graduates as potential future leaders who will use their top notch communication and relationship building skills to collaborate across the Operations Centre in order to drive key business initiatives.  Our business Graduates participate in a 3 year training and on-boarding Graduate Programme which facilitates 3 rotations across 3 different teams in Operations to give you a breadth of experience across the EOC to help you determine where you would like to develop your career. The training and development program is designed specifically for graduates, and the program ensures you gain exposure to key leaders through our leadership talks series and leaders acting as career coaches, and that you have a multitude of networking and gross-group collaboration opportunities.

Graduates in the EOC participate in our local 3 year graduate program, but they also get to participate in our Global Microsoft Academy of College Hires (MACH) program too. Year 1 involves core training courses which will help you to develop your personal and professional skills and to establish a network with the MACH community, with 3 international trips in your first 2 years with Microsoft!  Year 2 of the program focuses on career development initiatives to help you manage your current, and future career at Microsoft.  There are over 2,500 active and alumni participants in MACH. Since 2005, the MACH Program has been welcoming new university and MBA graduate talent around the world, and cultivating them as passionate, innovative key contributors for Microsoft.

Our graduate programme…

• 3 year graduate program. All positions are permanent positions in Microsoft
• Dedicated training and development program, designed specifically for graduates to help you build your professional network and drive your career development
•  Exciting career paths within our business groups in Ireland and Internationally!
• You’ll join a large network of graduates and grad alumni members within Ireland and Internationally through the MACH program
• At least 3 international trips in your first two years with Microsoft!
• Competitive salaries
• 25 days holidays each year
• Pension
• Health Insurance
• Performance based bonus
• Flexible working hours 

Microsoft Ireland Graduate Program 2012

Do you want to be a part of one of the fastest growing teams at Microsoft in the multi-billion dollar advertising industry? Are you passionate about being a part of the next revolution in online advertising and working with other smart people to solve challenging problems and create innovative solutions for marketers? Are you passionate about working with customers and delivering sales and service through exceptional customer engagement?

The Media Specialist role is an advertising sales & service position focused on providing account management and growth strategies to small and mid-market companies in Europe. In this role, you will work directly with advertisers and agencies to develop and build campaigns to meet marketing objectives and establish relationships and growth strategies to drive revenue for the advertiser and Microsoft.  You’ll work with other smart people providing best in class sales and service to our advertising customers and partners.  

Key Responsibilities:

• Work with clients on advertising campaigns including: initial campaign set-up and on-boarding; analysis of campaign performance; data-driven campaign improvements and optimization; management of advertising creative, keyword lists, matching and bidding strategies; and ongoing account engagement and growth
• Expand each account into the various products and services, including search, display, contextual, international, and local products
• Deliver on industry-leading service level agreements (SLAs) for campaign management activities and conditions of satisfaction (CoS) for advertisers, agencies, and partners
• Develop and demonstrate a deep understanding of client return on investment (ROI) and cost per acquisition (CPA) goals, web site architecture, product / service update schedules, marketing philosophy, targeted demographics, etc.
• Work with internal tools and teams to identify up-sell opportunities and sell these solutions to the client.  Optimizations may include keyword expansions, targeting attributes, improved titles and descriptions, additional match types and enhanced bidding strategies
• Engage directly with clients to receive, test, and implement advertiser creative
• Investigate and resolve delivery/performance issues and advise management as to revenue risk
• Drive resolution of escalated client technical issues
•  Project manage strategic initiatives either individually or by leading a virtual team to deliver high impact business results
•  Review and provide feedback on new processes, product, and tool releases that will improve operational efficiencies; help foster innovation and thought leadership in tool and process development
• Knowledge and understanding of all internal systems to respond to general and specialized client requests; including billing inquiries, click activity inquiries, bidding requests, relevancy issues, display performance reporting etc.
• Maintain and update proficiencies in the online advertising marketing space.

European Development Centre Graduate Programme

The Office Ireland Development Team is part of the worldwide multi-billion dollar office business.  We will design how our hundreds of millions of users discover and buy apps, solutions, services and dynamic content – enabling them to be more productive, and to create amazing content.  Compelling new scenarios will be delivered into Office.com, a Microsoft website with over a billion page views / 200 million visitors a year; into Office applications (such as Word and Excel – the biggest software franchise on the planet); and into the Office Server products (such as SharePoint).

We are a team with a strong focus on innovation, collaboration and execution.  Our background is solving complex problems with powerful, simple solutions.  We enable new business models and new scenarios, applying new thinking in processes, design, UI and solutions.  We place a great emphasis on achieving strong results in an environment that is fun, collaborative and that challenges you to grow.  We are proud to be voted Ireland’s best workplace 3 years in a row.

What is Program Management?

Program Managers (PM) work alongside software developers and testers, designing and creating compelling new software solutions. PMs own a feature in an area of a product and write functional specifications for this. A developer then takes this and turns it into a work feature.  A “Spec” describes how a feature will function, the technical implementation, user interfaces and how it interacts with other features.  During the writing of a spec, a PM will spend time talking to partner teams around the globe to ensure their feature fits product and plan as a whole. PMs then focus on ensuring the feature is delivered in the final product.

 Program managers must not only think about the features they are working on, but also must look at the bigger picture of how this feature will affect future releases. PMs have a truly amazing job, one that’s unique and challenging but very rewarding, where you get to be technical and creative, making a real impact in a product.

Responsibilities:

• Research the best of the existing web and software experiences for selling content and applications today.
•  Tap into the expertise of existing teams to learn how to deliver global, high-scale, world-class services to meet the needs of millions.
•  Create persuasive pitches for new features, articulating which problems are being solved or opportunities exploited, and why this is a worthy area to invest.
• Create compelling storyboards for the user’s experience as they use (or administer) the features, paying particular attention to usability and discover-ability.
•  Effectively and confidently collaborate with local and remote teams to tune your design so it meets its goals.
• Brainstorm with developer and test counterparts on how to reduce the concepts to a technical implementation.
• Write specifications for new product features, detailing how your features will work, how data logically flows and how the product behaves when the user interacts with it.
• Work with developers and testers to turn the specification into stable code, making trade-offs and tweaks based on data you gather.
• Successfully incorporate feedback, including usability and customer/Beta feedback.
• Deliver the feature either into the Office product or onto a live site.

Program managers…

• Visionaries
• Have vision, and creates innovative, compelling solutions that users want
• Can really put themselves into the user’s shoes
• Feel comfortable asking questions, but also surprise with innovative answers
• Technically knowledgeable
• Have strong technical abilities, logical thinking and good problem solving abilities
• Can understand code and architectures enough to interact with senior developers
• Have familiarity with one or more of the following: web programming, web design, commerce, analytics, web-based business models.
• Are able to demonstrate an ability to walk through problems from multiple angles and rationales in order to arrive at an opinion.
•  Persuasive communicators
•  Can confidently represent and project their own ideas as well as their team’s, in meetings as well as in email.
• Structure information well, and can present ideas coherently
• Are excellent communicators and are confident in what they argue, but not overconfident
• Passionate
• Continually seek and act upon feedback, both for the feature they are developing and in their own personal development
• Have opinions about the Microsoft Office products and competitors’ products / websites.
• Are passionate about technology.
• Make a real difference to the bottom line, often by designing product features that will deliver millions of dollars of value at Microsoft 

CV/Online Application Form

Ensure that you include all details and fill in all sections, so that we have all the information we need. Please be sure to fill in as many fields as possible, as the data is critical for our recruitment process.

Student Evaluation Screens 

You may not have been asked to fill out a questionnaire such as this in the past. The questions are designed to let us know more than what is on your CV, so think about your examples carefully. We also want to know what kind of projects you want to work on, so be honest.

Coding Tests 

If you are applying for one of our technical programmes you will be asked to write code as part of this year's evaluation process, as that is a key competency for our technical positions. Be sure to read the question carefully, write the best code you can, test it, and implement the most elegant solution you can. More code does not necessarily mean “good code”. Also, the test will be timed, so plan your approach in advance so you don’t leave key steps out of your process.

Assessment Centres

An assessment centre involves coming on-site with other candidates and taking part in a number of exercises throughout the day. It will give you the opportunity to see what Microsoft is like and to meet some of the managers. The exercises will rate you against core competencies that we feel are important for any Microsoft employee. The exercises may include a case study, group exercise, presentation, and technical exercise.

(Assessment centres will be used this year for Business & MACH Graduate Candidates only.

“Don’t try and play a role, be yourself. This helped me throughout the assessment because I gained confidence throughout the day. If you are just yourself and put your best foot forward, that is all anyone wants from you. This allowed me to focus on my strengths and gave me the opportunity to ‘shine my own light’.” —Ciara, MACH

Interviews

Interviews at Microsoft give you the opportunity to find out more about our company, including the various groups and the specific roles on offer. It also gives us the opportunity to get to know more about you. Use this time to ask any questions you have and make sure that you have all the information you need about the roles on offer, our programmes, etc. For technical interviews we’ll ask you technical questions which you should answer using a whiteboard. Don’t let this put you off. It’s a way of illustrating your answers and your thinking behind them.

“Never assume you have failed an interview, even if you haven’t solved all of the problems or feel dissatisfied with your answers. Always do your best until the very end; don’t ever give up; and always leave a good impression. If you don’t know something, just say it. Don’t worry; nobody knows everything. It’s more about how you’re willing to learn new things. Don’t be afraid to ask questions, an interview is not just a one-way street. You do most of the talking, but the interviewer is there to answer your questions as well.” —Agata, Graduate

Nerves

All of us are nervous when we attend any assessment centre/interview. Our interviewers will try to put you at ease. We are not here to catch you out; we simply want to find out more information about you. Try to remember this to calm your nerves so that we can get a true picture of who you are.

“Don’t be afraid if you’re not from Ireland or an English-speaking country. Your English doesn’t have to be perfect as long as you can communicate. There are teams in Microsoft that are very multicultural, which gives everyone invaluable experience. The more nationalities and cultures we have here, the better.” —Agata, Graduate.

Examples

Competency-based recruitment is about showing us that you posses certain skills that we deem important for our roles. It involves your experiences and how you deal with certain situations. Think of examples in advance to make it easier for you to discuss, even if you’re nervous. Examples can come from your college experience, but also from work experience, hobbies, and interests. They could include working on a project, working within a team, or dealing with difficult situations.

“For my interview, preparing real-world examples was the best help. You know you are always going to get questions on ‘Can you tell me a time you worked in a team/ had conflict/ had to work under pressure, etc’. I did work experience in my college course and my advice would be to give business examples of your experience to answer these questions, rather than constantly having to refer to college work alone.” —Diarmuid, Graduate

Time & Location

Ensure that you are on time and give yourself plenty of time to get here. Plan your journey in advance so that you know where you are going. If you arrive early, you will give yourself an opportunity to relax, take in your surroundings, and prepare yourself.

"Make sure you are on time. Leave half an hour earlier, allow for traffic and other problems that can be out of your control." —Shaun, Intern

Preparation

There is a lot of information online about Microsoft. Prepare in advance so that you find out information about the company and what we do here in Ireland. Have examples of your own experiences fresh in your mind and brush up on your general technical skills.

“Read up about what’s going on in the market with Microsoft and their competitors and then form your own opinion. It shows the interviewer that you have thought about how it would affect you if you were the person involved.” —Finbar, Graduate

Remember, if you have gotten this far, we just want to find out more information about you and give you more information about us. So relax, and we’ll take care of the rest.