Each year, over 25–30k students apply for the Microsoft engage program, and only a few get selected for the mentorship. I was one of the candidates to get this fantastic opportunity, and I sought to make the most out of it, in the end, I received a direct SWE 2023 summer internship offer at Microsoft. And I'm going to share my journey, my learnings with you through this article.
How I got into Microsoft Engage 2022
It was around the mid of April when one of my seniors sent me the application link for Engage'22. I was excited about the opportunity and luckily It was the last day for filing the form. I would suggest you keep an eye on the application forms as they are open only for a short period of time. This year forms were open only for 2 days. I filled out the form a few hours before the deadline.
After a week of initial shortlisting through resumes, I received an invite for a test link. I would suggest you create an amazing resume to pass shortlisting round and focus on your CGPA starting from the first year of your college & create good projects and practice problem-solving.
The next rounds of the selection process included two challenges and both rounds were eliminatory in nature.
Challenge 1 was a basic MCQ-based DSA quiz test. The quiz test consists of 10 questions in 30 min. And the following topics are important: Data structures and Algorithms, Operating systems, and Database Management systems. Successfully cleared the first round and received the invitation for the next challenge.
Challenge 2 was a logical and reasoning test. This was a little bit tricky round as you also had to explain the approach you used to reach the solution. You can expect algorithmic puzzles in this challenge - questions where you may be asked to provide a solution to an algorithmic puzzle in plain text, and/or write or analyze short blocks of programming language independent pseudo-code.
On 2nd May I received the qualification mail and I qualified for Engage 2022. I was Excited!🎉
What happened during Microsoft Engage 2022
I was very excited to be mentored by mentors from Microsoft and attend amazing AMA sessions and amazing workshops. Each group was allotted a mentor. And I couldn't have asked for a better mentor, we had 1 meeting weekly, to discuss the obstacles during the development phase and get insights about work at Microsoft along with a plethora of informative AMA sessions.
This year there were 3 tracks - Face Recognition, Data Analysis and Algorithms. Find more information about tracks here. We had the choice to select any of the tracks and build the project on that and we were free to use any technology/framework as per our choice. I choose to go with Face Recognition and build a student attendance system which will directly mark the attendance of the student in an excel sheet.
During the program, we had various workshops and AMA sessions and also received weekly assignments to evaluate our performance.
After 4 weeks of dedicated hard work and with the help of my mentor, I was able to complete my project and it was very well received. Finally, I submitted my work for the final evaluation with an explanation video with it. Link to my project
The evaluation of submission could either give me the opportunity to get a direct offer or an interview opportunity. After 2-3 weeks of evaluation, some people received a direct offer for the internship and I was one of them.
I read the mail just when I woke up in the morning my happiness knew no bounds, it was soooo overwhelming😄, I had received the internship offer 🎉🎉. I told my parents (Nothing great just a normal reaction) and then I went out to have some Jalebi and Shrikhand. My 2 years of consistent work paid me well.
Kudos🥳 to every participant who worked hard during the program as I know many students had exams going on during the program it was not easy to manage the meetings and exams altogether. I too had my exams and an ongoing Internship during the program it was not easy to manage but yeah! I did what I could do best and at last, all things went well.
I hope this article helps you in some way. Be nice and genuine with everyone including you, good things will happen. Thank you!