Some valuable advice from Microsoft recruiters over on the SI Career Services Blog:

1. Students over-emphasized their skills with regard to methodology/techniques. It’s very important for students to convey and demonstrate that they are well-trained and experienced in the core research techniques/tools. But students should keep in mind that this only meets our expectations. We have such respect for the SI program that we would expect all students to be well-trained. What students also need to convey is how they have applied the skills/techniques, how they used them to achieve some benefit, and their insights and lessons learned from their application to real-world problems.

2. Students over-emphasized group work. Working with teams is a critical part of ‘real-world skills’ and we recognize that many classes emphasize group projects. But students should always be prepared to articulate what their individual contribution was to any project. We (as interviewers) recognize the value of the group project, but we hire individuals. We can only make a positive hiring decision when we get a strong sense of who the individual is (their individual skills, strengths, expertise, passions, and insight/perspectives). (SI Careers Note: We strongly emphasize that demonstrated teamwork is important in interviewing, but that while discussing your group work, students should specifically talk about the role they played in the project (less “we” and more “me”).

More in the full post. Most job hunters don’t realize how much those little things really matter.

Categories: Careers