General Management Club – Interactions with Alumni from Microsoft!!

We conducted our first Alum Interaction session last week with two alums, Surya Shastri (Co2003) and Rao Korupolu (Co2008), both from Microsoft who shared their insights about the role and work of Program Management at Microsoft. First, Surya and Rao detailed their profile and typical work day. Later, they took time to patiently address queries from students. Around 80-100 students attended the informative meet and provided real good feedback about the same.

Some of the key excerpts from the Q & A session including Alumni response are:

• Microsoft has four divisions in India that include sales and marketing, consulting, program management, and product planning. At Microsoft in the Program Management roles, you will get opportunity to work across multiple functions such as legal, marketing, finance, corporate planning, sales, etc

• Not everything in each business is done from India. Hence the overall picture of the business will not be pretty clear from India.

• When it comes to placements is what you have done before and not what you have done here at ISB. They look for what’s transferable from past, can you solve real world problems.

• An important question was asked on Work life balance and the Alums provided real good picture of life at Microsoft. Of course they agreed there may be difficult times but that’s not the order of the day.

• Surprisingly, the Program Management role does not entail P & L responsibility.

• Microsoft conducts 4-5 back to back interviews and goes at length to hire candidate.

• During interview short list, they look for clear stand out things in CV, brand names from school help, leadership stuff in CV, and it can be little harder for people not from technology backgrounds.

• Differentiation at ISB vs. IIM: - Several ladder levels within Program Management. The SVP of Windows and a Software Development Engineer joined the same time in 1985. IIM guy with 1 year experience would need lot more years to reach the level experienced guys will be hired. Interviewers will put everyone in the right place.

• What applies from ISB – You get very good at asking good question via MBA. You may not have answers though.

• Negotiating during interview – Do your job, ace your interview, 5-6 round of interviews, don’t worry about things such as salary n all. Microsoft takes care!! Don’t worry about that.

Overall it was an interesting start to learning experience from ISB via General Management Club and will continue to. I hope I will do a better job at reporting the same next time  !!