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That signifies the spirit of the people at Microsoft. The desire to excel at whatever one does is propelled by the work culture that is prevalent.

There are practically no restrictions on ways to approach one’s work. From its inception as a start up with 20 people nine years ago at Hyderabad, MSIDC has made significant contributions to Microsoft’s product stable and has filed over 180 patents and is the biggest development center outside Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, USA. The workforce at MSIDC has crossed 1200.

Excerpts from the conversation:

Talent and pure talent is what we look for in a prospective employee when we go hiring. Whatever the position we are hiring for, that is the basic and major rule we apply. We go across India to over 25 campuses to recruit freshers. What we look for are engineering graduates from any stream with strong fundamentals and knowledge in computer science.

Talent is not just knowledge gained from textbooks that we are looking for. We look to youngsters who would like to transform themselves into next generation innovators. They must be passionate about technology and have the ability to think in future terms.

Willingness to learn is an important trait that candidates need to demonstrate, especially freshers. When they have that quality in them, it becomes easy for them to enjoy their work. At Microsoft, teams work on different technologies and platforms. The willingness and ability to broaden one’s horizon of learning helps in contributing to the team knowledge base and success.

The ability to be a team player is now more important than ever, as teams collaborate to make ideas work. Youngsters need to demonstrate that they can work in teams. Ability to communicate clearly is always an added advantage.

Competitive events like Shaastra provide a platform to young people from all over the country to showcase their skills. Students from different streams of engineering come to events like this bubbling with enthusiasm and armed with high technical skills that they have learnt and experimented with. They have the desire to pit their skills against others equally talented that is they have a spirit of competition and want to test their knowledge.

The events sponsored by MSIDC are ‘SHOCK’ and ’Pwned!’ While SHOCK is a coding competition, Pwned! is a 2D/3D game development competition.

Microsoft being a sponsor for this event offers prizes and also provides an opportunity for the winners to interview with us for full time employment.

At Microsoft we believe that individuals need to be provided the freedom to work the way they want. We provide the best of training for a newcomer to imbibe our culture and spirit of work.

Our Individual Development Programme addresses the needs of each employee in charting a career path. Each employee has a mentor, who guides the individual in all stages of his career.

This way we help people realise their aspirations.

Yes, we all have a job to do but that doesn’t stop us from having a great time as well. On any given workday, you will see our employees taking a break by enjoying the outdoors.

Our sports facilities and cafes provide breathers and refresh people.

MSIDC has designed policies in a manner that it not only helps employees excel at the workplace, but also enables them to spend quality time with their family. Some of its supportive initiatives to promote work life balance are flexi-timings, bring your child to work, work from home policy. At MSIDC the HR and people practices have been designed keeping the employees’ best interests in mind, and goes a long way in keeping the attrition levels much lower than the industry average.

K V. RAJASEKHER

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