Be Your Future

Off-sites are a big part of Microsoft culture and you may have heard our interns and MACHs mention them in their blogs. They are essentially events or days out that take place out of the office for team building and/or strategy and planning meetings. Here are two intern’s perspectives about off-sites:

“Earlier in the year I and the other intern in my team, Joe Stiff, were lucky enough to go on our team’s offsite to Bath for two days. And yes we were very lucky! We stayed in a fantastic spa hotel, played team games, had a long overdue team meeting and we worked on personal development which I will find useful for my career in the future.

We were lucky enough again to go on another team offsite a few weeks ago to Newbury races. This one was focused on team building and was a nice reward for all the hard work the team has put in over the year. Our team has had a couple of new starters and has just merged with another team so it also gave us a chance to meet the rest of team and get to know them a little bit better.

It was the first time I’d been to the races, it was a good laugh though and something different but I’m sad to say that I lost a whole £6 on the horses L Our team weren’t big winners unfortunately apart from one who won £200, not bad!

Here are a few photos I took on the day:

Holly”

 

“Team offsites have been a highlight for me this year, as I have had the chance to go to new and exciting places to get to know my team that little bit more.

Every year business groups all get together and go away for a few days, allowing you to get to know other teams and network making your job when you get back into the office that little bit easier as you know who does what and where.  Not only do you get the chance to figure out what everyone does and how you can all help each other, you get the chance to get a true business update on where we are as a company, and where we are heading.  As an intern it’s really important to figure out what roles require which skills and it’s important to speak to as many people as possible to figure out which steps you should be taking for your future career.  In March, Marketing and Operations headed off to Legoland for two days to do just this – two days of getting to know other teams and people within the group.

On the first day we were all put in mixed teams and following the business conference in the morning we were given the task to come up with our own music videos and to recreate an album cover.  My team were given the grand task of recreating Oasis’s famous cover for ‘Definitely Maybe’, and out came the wigs.  One of the best things about these events is that as an intern you get to have fun and work with experienced people from all different backgrounds, who all have a fair few stories to tell.  Then it was on to the task of recreating the video for Supergrasses ‘Alright’.  I took on the role as director and had members of our leadership team running around Legoland with wigs and starry glasses on; now you can’t say you get to do that every day at work.

The evening was 80s themed and with dressing up items on everyone’s tables, it was hard not to get into the spirit. I’ll let the picture do the talking:

The next day we actually got to go around the park and were set tasks such as come up with a new app, create a poem showing off our products using Lego words, using an attraction come up with a new concept for a Kinect game etc.  The two days were a lot of fun and certainly a highlight of my internship.  From Lego to safari, Business Planning are off to Longleat next, let’s hope the monkeys don’t attack the Microsoft Jeep.

Justine”