Microsoft Toronto Internship Experience — 4 months
As I approach the 6 month mark for my internship as a business program manager intern, I am grateful for the opportunity and learning.
I work in compliance and a lot of the work involves documentation which is used for internal purposes, efficiency analysis (as in identifying areas for potential efficiency), and working closely with the finance team (and other adjacent functions) to support their day-to-day work.
As a computer science student, I was able to benefit a lot from this experience because I was able to develop my interpersonal, analytical and business skills, especially when it comes to accounting, finance, and fundamentals. I was also able to piece together how these processes are tracked and forecasted at a corporate level which was really interesting.
Some key lessons that I learned include having a clear understanding before performing any data analysis or even pivot tables and calculations, is to ensure the data you start off with is in the form that you need — if there are any data or filters that need to be applied make sure that is done first! or else it can cause you to require more work.
I also make use of multiple note taking apps to keep track of the multiple tasks that I need to do and this helps me to conduct any followups / track additional items for discussion.
I also learned about communication styles — when doing any functions that require replies in a quick manner, I found that a combination of outlook and teams message was good, and knowing when to ask / approach individuals and how to formulate these communications in a respectable and professional manner was important.
I'm also continuing to learn and develop my technical skills and I hope that this will enable me to contribute in those areas as well.
