The importance of an internship experience cannot be belittled. Today, employers favour prospective employees who have done not only one but multiple internships.  Having just a great GPA is no longer enough! In an increasingly competitive employment situation and especially in a depressed economy, an internship is invaluable for a student to have. A college education will serve to propel a graduate into a profession by conferring a degree, which demonstrates an academic proficiency in various theoretical and practical examples of ways that a job might be performed.  An internship makes the classroom’s abstract theories and learned examples concrete by placing the student in a real life work situation with real live co-workers performing actual professional tasks, which the job encompasses. An internship can be inspiring and even life changing.  It will get you employed.

Recently 4 students from CEG, Anna University, Gopinath, Rajagopal, Surendhar and Nivetha, were taken as interns in Microsoft, Hyderabad and Bangalore. Flights were booked for them and full 60 days hotel accommodation including food and transportation to the company was provided. The work timings were flexible. They interned for eight weeks, at the end of which all four of them returned with pre-placement offers (PPOs).

As an intern at Microsoft, they had real responsibility, real work and real opportunities to jumpstart their career. "It’s an experience you’ll never find in a classroom", they say. They were given manageable assignments to be completed while they were there. "Your efforts will likely take shape in Microsoft products—or be used by Microsoft teams—long after you return to college. You could help create a Web application, a marketing plan, a prototype, a user guide—the possibilities are endless.  Some interns even parlay their intern experience into a job offer." And that is exactly what they did.

Your efforts will likely take shape in Microsoft products—or be used by Microsoft teams—long after you return to college. You could help create a Web application, a marketing plan, a prototype, a user guide—the possibilities are endless.

But acquiring this internship was not an easy task. They had to go through five rounds of interview. First round lasted for about half an hour and consisted of MCQs based on basic aptitude, programming and data structures. The second round, ranged for an hour and consisted of two questions, for which the code had to be typed and the output obtained. The third and fourth rounds were personal interviews where your knowledge of the subject is really tested. The fifth round was a test for your logical thinking wherein a puzzle is to be solved.

We worked really hard, stayed up late night and even went on weekends to get our projects done

At first each one of the interns were assigned mentors, who were employees of Microsoft. During the first week they learnt about the different inbuilt tools of Microsoft. Second week onwards they started working on projects assigned to them and were also included in the latest developments of the company. “We worked really hard, stayed up late night and even went on weekends to get our projects done”, says Gopinath. At the end of the 7th week if you have done a good job, then your mentor and manager recommends you to the HR team, after which there will be two or three rounds of interviews.

I would attend technical symposiums of various colleges and also organized a couple of events in our college symposiums which helped me to a greater extent

“I used to code regularly in SPOJ and TopCoder and also prepared for the interviews from various websites like geeksforgeeks and careercup. I would attend technical symposiums of various colleges and also organized a couple of events in our college symposiums which helped me to a greater extent“, says Gopinath. He attributed his success to his parents for their sincere support and special thanks to Ashwin Karthi and Rajkiran (CEG alumni who interned previously at Microsoft) for their support and guidance.