Microsoft Placement Papers

MACH (Microsoft Academy of Campus Hires) – Associate Consultant 

The Opportunity: 

This role is part of the Microsoft Academy of Campus Hires (MACH) program, Microsoft’s cutting-edge new graduate development program, designed for top-tier undergraduate and MBA students. The MACH program provides role-customized world-class training, a network of over 2500 MACH employees in over 60 countries, you will experience a global network of peers, the support to transition successfully from school to the working environment, world-class training to help you professionally, and the tools to help you achieve your long-term career goals

This role provides a tremendous opportunity for a new graduate to join one of the world’s largest technology providers, in a top-tier customer-facing role. It provides you with an opportunity to learn and grow by partnering with a team technical professionals and a variety of technology partners.

What can MACH hires expect? 

The MACH program will provide hires with a set of skills to help bridge the gap from academic to professional life. Hires will receive quality training to develop their skills to be successful in the company. There will be a supportive environment to help hires transition into their professional roles and hires will also have an opportunity to learn more about the worldwide business with a global peer network.

Associate Consultant Role: 

• As an Associate Consultant, you implement, develop, and architect effective solutions while working directly with customers.
• You use your software expertise to help ensure that our customers get greater business value from our world-class technology.
• You also grow your own expertise in platform and industry solutions and strategic technology consulting. If you want to have an immediate impact with real-world implications, this a great place to start.

Qualifications: 

• BE/B.Tech preferable in Engineering, Computer Science, Information Technology
• No break in education and GPA scores greater than 7 CGPA.
• Fluent in English oral and written.
• Strong interest in Microsoft Technologies (.net, Azure,).
• Deep understanding of markets, customers and related technology

Skills: 

• Technology obsessed
• Ability to influence, inspire and lead from any role
• Good understanding of the relationship between technology and business
• Passion for technology and innovation
• Learn and Apply engineering principles to solve business problems through teamwork
• Eager to grow and learn
• Excellent communication, negotiation and presentation
• Competency in Building Successful Relationships
• Analytical problem solving skills
• Cross-boundary collaboration
• Thriving in a fast paced, ambiguous environment

Premier Field Engineer 

As a Premier File Engineer (PFE), you will be responsible for delivering dedicated technical solution support to strategic Microsoft customers ensuring the health of their IT infrastructure. The candidate must have strong customer service, problem solving, and communication skills, and the ability to work in a team environment.

This position requires acquiring broad technology experience and demonstrated understanding of these technologies. The candidate may work both onsite with the customer and remotely in both reactive and proactive technical modes. The candidate will be expected to demonstrate and provide examples of their ability to function and contribute to a team-oriented environment.

Role-specific qualifications

• Exceptional customer service, overall communication and technical writing skills
• Microsoft Product Certification, MCSE or other technical certifications preferred
• Develop and maintain a source for solution information to facilitate better support
• Develop and implement strategies for providing proactive support services resulting in fewer incidents, increased availability, and/or accelerated deployments
• Utilize knowledge of the customer environment to drive issues to resolution and ensure IT health
• Deliver timely, high quality incident resolution focusing on root cause analysis, prevention and knowledge transfer
• Manage escalations and sub-cases to ensure timely and high quality resolution of all issues either to the PFE Solutions Support team, the Solution developer team or Customer Service and Support if the problem is isolated to a single product
• Deliver customized knowledge transfer workshops focused on supporting the solution to improve customer readiness as well as organizational IT health
• Develop a relationship with technical directors or lead architects for the technologies featured in the solution, resulting in more active participation in planning and improved satisfaction in support
• Partner with the TAM and the local account team to effectively plan for delivery and document action plans and daily status updates for the customer and Microsoft management
• Develop a strong working relationship with the consulting team and the local account team to achieve increased cooperation and mutual support in achieving each other's goals
• Initiate and participate in triage meetings to share knowledge with other engineers and to efficiently resolve customer problems
• Participate in Early Assist for key products in order to maintain solution knowledge and ensure delivery of high quality support for the customer solution
• Facilitate deliveries of other PFE proactive services that are more product specific
• Contribute to both the creation and active reuse of Intellectual Property (IP)

Project Manager 

The Project Manager applies solid project management and leadership skills and experience in delivering projects on-time, within budget, and with high customer satisfaction. To be effective, he or she must manage technology projects through all phases of a solution’s or application’s lifecycle in a consulting organization, with expertise and proven abilities in risk management and mitigation, and business value or strategy consulting. The Project Manager helps customer account teams identify, pursue and close strategic business development opportunities while continually driving add-on business within existing accounts. To accomplish this, Project Manager’s must be effective in fostering executive level relationships. Project Manager’s help translate business requirements into technology requirements for inclusion in contracts and/or statements of work (SOW). In some cases, Project Manager’s will also assist in contract negotiations and engagement management.

As a Project Manager, you will learn how to:

Deliver engagements within the constraints of schedule, features/functionality, and budget

• Manage the work that must be done in order to deliver an integrated solution usually composed of solutions, services, or a formalized solution offering
• Establish a strategy of continuous risk management that enables proactive decisions and actions throughout the project lifecycle and creates an environment to support it where the project team has visible, measurable, and repeatable processes for managing these risks
• Stay current and involved in collecting conditions of the project relative to resources (people and optionally funding/cost) and schedule (time) as specified by the established project protocol. In addition, performs the process of comparing actual performance with planned performance, analyzes variances, evaluates possible alternatives and takes appropriate corrective action (control) as specified by the established project protocol
• Maintain the Master Project Plan, Master Project Schedule and Services Delivery Methodology (SDM) deliverables

Role-specific qualifications

• Passion for technology, learning and working with customers
• Exceptional customer service, overall communication and writing skills
• Aptitude for providing exceptional customer service in politically charged environments
• Exceptional communication and team building skills
• Strong analytical, planning and project management skills

Demonstrated ability to implement successful projects