Trade Marketing Review

My internship has been incredible, I've worked across teams and spent the year with 100 other fantastic interns. I've enjoyed most aspects of my job and was given the opportunity to network, manage my own projects and have a real impact on the business.

In Microsoft the culture is all about valuing your colleagues and respecting your community, this is something which I have felt throughout every aspect of my work. My team members recognise your achievements and praise you when you've done well. Many team members have said to our intern group that they don't know what they'll do without us, which is definitely a highlight after this year.

The management team in my department are very open and approachable which makes the working environment much more pleasurable. If you don't feel as if your manager is being supportive enough the University Staffing Team are always an email away to offer you guidance on the situation you might be in. But you definitely never feel alone in the any problem you might find yourself, through the intern community, managers, mentors..

Personally, my role varied in busy periods to quieter periods, but when the busy days came around they were BUSY! After having a longer quieter period at the beginning of the year I appreciated the busier periods and enjoyed the challenges new projects created during the busy times. Definitely improved my organisational skills!

I was actually surprised at how much responsibility Microsoft gives its interns. It definitely boosted my confidence in my abilities and enabled me to learn more about my skills which I didn't neccesarily realise I had.

Looking back over the past year I feel like I've been able to apply some knowledge from uni as well as improve my soft skills which will undoubtedly help me in my final year when I have to reach certain deadlines for projects. The knowledge I've learnt this year about application processes and the marketing skills I've learnt will be something I take with me to future roles and my career.

My team is a young team so there were often evenings where we would go out to a bar after work and we had team social nights as well as socializing with the other interns. We were a strong community and had lunch together almost every day, which some might see as a bad thing however you could also have lunch with the other employees and other areas of the business to increase your network.

We were in a unique situation where the business had a re-structure so were left in a tricky situation however we were given a project to complete whilst our roles were being organised and then we were able to create our own roles depending on what the teams needs were. There was support throughout the placement and a network always working to help you.

The company is heavily invested in its employees and this is shown through the different trainings they encourage you to take part in. I was able to complete my Microsoft Office exams and now have certificates in Excel and Word which will always look good on my CV. There were also other internal trainings which the team offered to us interns even when they weren't relevant to our roles as we could still build on our knowledge of the product.

Although there are currently only a few marketing graduate roles I have still applied to the graduate scheme as I know Microsoft is an incredible company to work for and I would be able to move around the company in the different sectors I would like to explore.

Our intern group was a fantastic community! Especially in London we were such a close group of friends, as I previously mentioned we would go for lunch together, have socials, meet at weekends and I can definitely say I have made friends for life.

As I was based in London everything was quite expensive however you soon get to know the tips and tricks of going out and where to not go. I went into the year knowing that it would be expensive but I was prepared to spend the money I had earned for a fantastic year experiencing London and I was still able to save some money!

As it was London we had so many places to choose from for a night out, a lot of us lived quite far apart however that just meant that we got to explore different areas of London and found the quirky and crazy clubs in smaller areas rather the more popular expensive clubs.

Your time outside of work is your own, you can join the different communities within Microsoft, you can go out with people from work, meet up with friends in the city or join sports clubs, it's London you can never be bored!