CodePath EES2024 MICROSOFT - Exclusive: Empowering Innovation with Microsoft Copilot

Hi everyone, welcome back. ES 2024 in full swing. We are excited to have you all here.

We are excited today to bring you a session from Microsoft, Empowering Innovation with Microsoft Co-Pilot. We have a fantastic group of presenters from Microsoft who are going to be taking you through this session. But first, just a few reminders.

Everyone can see the chat, so please keep your topics focused on today’s your comments focused on today’s topic. We are really excited to have you here. Our team will be monitoring the chat and there will be an opportunity for Q&A near the end.

Following the session, we will ask you to fill out a brief feedback survey. We really appreciate your feedback. So, please take a minute or two to do that.

And without further ado, with the reminders out of the way, I am excited to bring to the stage our first Microsoft team member who will be introducing herself. She is coming to the stage and so welcome to the Microsoft team. Thank you so much.

I appreciate it. Hey everybody, happy emerging engineers summit 2024. My name is Chi and my full name is Chioma, but you can call me Chi.

I have curly hair. I’m wearing glasses and a pink purplish shirt. Pronouns are she, her, and I am an early and profession recruiter here at Microsoft.

And I am super excited to be introducing my lovely colleagues today. I will not be yapping at you. If you were at the ES preview session with Microsoft, I talked at you for a really long time.

So this time, I promise I will step down and let my colleagues take over. I’m super excited to introduce them. They have a really awesome presentation ready for you all.

And I think everyone’s going to walk away with a lot of learnings. You’ll get an exclusive glimpse really into the future of tech and the transformative potential of AI, which it’s the hot topic right now. So we’re super excited.

We hope that you, you know, have the opportunity and feel empowered to engage with our AI experts and see how Microsoft Copilot is really shaping the next era of tech. And then you can also leverage learn how you can leverage Copilot yourself and boost your career trajectory. So, I’m super excited.

And I will go ahead and pass it over to my teammates to give an quick introduction of themselves before they really dive into the content. So yeah, I will pass it over to Jazelle. Hi everyone.

Hi, greetings from Europe. My name is Jesselle. I’m the support evangelist for advanced support for partners.

I’m a global support evangelist and I’m glad to be here and I would like to show you later on more what we can do with copilot. So I’m really excited to have this invitation and I’m being in Microsoft for more than five years. So that’s a brief introduction from me.

Thank you. Bye. All right.

Hello everyone. My name is Jason Prime. I am a cloud sol so as a cloud solution architect I specialize in working with co-pilot.

I’m normally sitting in Florida in the United States, but right now I’m actually coming to you live from Sydney, Australia. So, welcome everyone and hope to get some great questions. Talk to you soon.

Hi everyone, my name is Sean. I’m from Canada. I’m a technical specialist for business application and recently modern work.

I’ve been with Microsoft for three years. I’m also playing the role of the cross solution AI lead for Canada. So I’m helping our customer understand how they can leverage our different AI tools to get the most value out of it.

So it’s a real pleasure to be with you today. I’ll first start first I’m super excited to you know join you today to talk about Copalot. I’ve been working with Microsoft products for the last 13 years and I honestly haven’t witnesses as much innovation as I have in the last two years.

AI is changing the way we work and the way we live and I personally find it really exciting time to be in tech. I’d like to start with a quick definition of what generative AI is because it’s what Copilot is based on. Since the advent of Chad GPT and its rise, we tend to forget that generative AI is not the same as AI.

It’s just one type of AI built on top of other AI technologies. As it name may suggest, generative AI is a form of AI that can generate or create content in text format, images, music, code, and even videos. It’s a type of AI that can understand human natural language and interact with us in similar way.

I really think it’s important to mention it because by talking by with my customer, I realized that a lot of people are just confusing generative AI with AI in general. As I mentioned, AI is not new. We have to go back as far as 19 56 for the term AI to be coined and even to 1950 when you Turing introduced the Turing test which if you don’t know is basically a way to determine if a computer or machine can think like a human.

In 1960 the first computer that learned skills by trial and errors was developed by a guy called Archer Samuel and it was called Samuel’s checker program. Since then we had numerous breakthrough including Jabber wacky IBMD blue Watson Siri and finally obviously in 2022 ChatGPT I don’t know about you but for me it seems like ages ago u we’ve seen so much innovation and mass adoption since then that what was once considered science fiction in 2021 which is not too far ago is now just part of our daily lives. If you look at it, it took 16 years for mobile phones to reach 100 million users.

It took seven years for the internet and 4.5 years for Facebook, but only three months for ChatGPT. This is totally crazy first and unprecedented. Now based on various studies we’re expecting AI to boost global GDP by as much as 14% in the next six years which will represent a contribution of 15.7 trillions to the global economy.

We anticipate at Microsoft that AI will have a positive impact on all type of organizational growth. Which will create a lot of opportunities and this is why you’ve heard the term co-pilot a lot lately. If you’re following Microsoft obviously don’t be surprised that we now have many co-pilots both as standalone products and as part of our existing products.

There’s obviously copilot inside our productivity productivity tools in Microsoft 365 Jason will cover them we’ll cover that in more detail in a few but also within the power platform which is our low code no code platform and our business application with dynamics 365 and more so to be honest I’m not even sure how many we have exactly as of today but I can tell you we have a lot I understand that it could be confusing sometimes so I like to quickly break them down into categories ories to help you understand the horizon of all our copilot. The first category is what I call the copilot for all. This include copilot in Windows.

It’s only accessible for certain version of Windows 11 and on the taskbar. So if you don’t see it, it’s probably because you don’t have the right version. There’s also Copilot in Microsoft Edge, which can be accessed from either copilot.microsoft.com or in the sidebar of Microsoft Edge.

There’s copilot for M365 which includes what we just renamed a week ago this this chat which lets you chat with your organizational data and integrate into our productivity suits like PowerPoint, Word, Excel, etc. Then we have what we what I call the copilot per role which is essentially the created created copilot specifically tailored for certain roles. This includes copilot for services, sales, finance, security, and I I I put GitHub there since it’s really geared toward developers. There are these are really tailored to address the specific needs of a specific role.

For instance, if I take copilot for sales, it will allow you to create records in your CRM system, ask question about your data, and summarize and generate word documents or emails all from your sales related data. For info right now we’re supporting Dynamics 365 CRM and Salesforce as well but we’re coming with with more thirdparty application that will be supported. Same for copile for service or copile for findings.

The third category is the per application category which adds additional generative AI capabilities to our existing products like D365 which is our CRM and ERP offering part the power platform which is our low code no code platform Azure which is our product as a service platform and fabric which which contain our data data and BI platform. Simple example if you go into power platform you can generate an application by simply explaining what you want to achieve you can do the same in powerbi dashboard using using copilot and powerbi so basically you’re using natural language you’re describing what you want to achieve it they will build it automatically for you all the functionalities I just described are out of the box features that can be configured for some but they can’t really be adapted for mo more complex Lex use cases. This is where the per scenario category comes into play.

Copilot studio for instance lets you extend copilot for M365. We will let you connect to different data sources from per PDF to third party applications and defining the behavior of your customized copilot. So it’s really a way of designing your own copilot but making them available to the mass user by integrating it with M365 copilot.

It’s not only limited to generation because copilot studio will allow you to trigger actions from your copilot as well. For example, you can create a copilot where employees can ask how many days of vacation they have left. Then copalot will query another system let’s say let’s say workday and it will return the value to the user.

If the employee then ask to book some time off copilot will be able to leverage power automate which is our local automation platform to create the request and workday automatically. This can all be done through copilot form 365 making making it fully transparent for the user as they will work in a tool they they’re used to work in but then it will call those more evolved copilot that you build for them. The last piece piece I wanted to cover it’s not a cool pallet but I think it’s worth mentioning it’s AI studio.

This is where you can leverage our AI services from Azure OpenAI to our cognitive services, our AI search which is an indexer. You can use those services to build your own applications. You can integrate them into your existing ones or you can even integrate them with Copilot Studio.

There’s there’s a connection directly between a Azure AI studio and Copilot Studio. So, if you want to build your own models and you want to trigger them from M365, that is totally feasible. I I hope honestly that this visual representation will help you grasp what Copala has to offer.

I know this this is complex and that we have a lot but to be fair there is still a lot for you to discover. But if you add only one place to start I will say that copilot for M365 will be the right place to begin. And that’s why for the next section Jason will deep dive into how copilot for M365 works under the hood.

So, over to you, Jason. All right. Thanks, Samuel.

Hey everyone. I’m back. Sam, if you wouldn’t mind going over to that next, slide here real quick.

Wonderful. So, today, for my part, we’re going to be talking about what happens when you submit a prompt with Copilot. So, we’re going to get into kind of the nitty-gritty of everything that happens because when you go in and start, you know, you’re typing in a sentence, maybe two, right?

And what happens with that the amount of technology that comes in and just takes over and starts to push this out in my mind just it honestly it blows my mind. So, we start with that user prompt, you know, getting put in. We could go to that next slide, please.

From there, we jump into what we call pre-processing or grounding. So, we’re going through and looking at you know, everything that’s being said. We’re trying to incorporate, you know, our base prompt into it to be able to grab all of your information from you know, the graph.

And when we’re talking about the graph, the easiest way to think about it is it’s all of your data that’s inside of Microsoft 365. So, emails, chats, files. I know I’m missing a few, but you get the idea.

It’s everything that’s in there, that we’re able to pull together. You can see that we’ve also got access to Bing, to plugins, to data versse, power platform, services, fabric, and we could just grab all of that information in one shot to be able to reason across it. Which is one of the best things about this.

If we could go to the next slide. All right, once we have gone through that pre-processing area, that first step, you know, then we’re jumping over to sending out the modified prompt to the large language models. Now, what I love with this is, you know, you type it in and it’s something that I’ve done quite a bit recently, with me being on in Australia, not wanting to do math on a 14-hour time difference.

I’m asking co-pilots a couple times a day, what time is it back home? And being able to get that information. The reason I mention that is we’re going for the intent of it.

You know, I don’t have to say necessarily, hey, where what time is it in Florida? I could say, what time is it back home? I could say, what time is it you know, in the US?

And it will bring up that information, but it understands the meaning of the words that I’m typing in and trying to understand how that all connects. One big thing that I will point out just really quick, the difference in between having a a prompt where you are using the word like recap versus summarize. You know, now us as humans, we hear that and it’s like, okay, we can figure out which one do.

But from a large language model, there’s a big difference between those two. And so making sure that you’re using the right words definitely helps. But that’s what we’re also doing with the grounding and under trying to understand it.

If you could jump over to that next slide once we have that process from the large language model. So we’ve sent out our prompt to the large language model. Now we need content back.

Once we have that, it gets sent back into the graph. The prompt has been modified. There’s some information.

We check permissions. So if we’re accessing a file for instance, we verify that you have access to that file at that exact moment. So from a security standpoint, it’s a really great way to be able to make sure everything stays locked down.

All right, if we could hit that next slide. All right, then we’re in that post-processing part, you know, where we are jumping to make sure that you have access to the information. We list out where all of the where we pull all the information from you know with footnotes.

So if you’ve used co-pilot you’ve probably noticed at the end of it you’ll see numbers like one two three four five six and so on. Those are all hyperlinks going over to a particular point in there. All right we jump to that next slide.

Once we have gone through that whole process, then we send the response back to the end user. The thing that I love with this is when you set this all in motion, it’s taking seconds to do all of this. It’s processing all of this data through the large language models.

It’s going through, it’s finding information. It’s linking it back to where you are, where we’re finding it so that you can verify it. You know, I’m a big believer in the trust but verify mantra.

And with Copilot, you have that ability. And it’s just amazing how quickly we can do this. I think we got one more slide.

Oh, wonderful. Retrieval augmented generation. Ah, this is going to be a lot of fun.

All right, let’s jump over to the next slide here. So when we start, we’ve talked about this part a little bit already, but the retrieval augmented generation or rag is going to be that process where we’re going back and forth with the large language model through that pre-processing. And so we’re going to go through and kind of refine that prompt as we go.

We could jump to the next slide. All right. I think we don’t have a good way of demoing that.

So I apologize you know to be able to do that. Really what we come down to with this is you know having when you go in and you type a prompt, it’ll go through spin up about probably 30 different pieces of technology just as an estimate. And it will go through and make multiple pushes pushes back and forth to be able to get that right information in place and be able to start to show that up.

All right, I think there is there one more slide I believe. All right, we do have a little bit here. Wonderful.

So, when we go through this, you know, we’re looking at that top line there where it says, "What is included in my Northwind Health Plus plan?" that’s not in standard, you know. So, we’re just looking for some information there. Let’s go ahead and jump over to that next slide.

So, what we changed that to for instance is Northwind Health Plus plan versus standard plan coverage. So, it’s a really easy way to kind of look at that. Right.

We jump over to the next. Once we start to look for that, then we send off to search engines to go through find all of the files that talk about it. You know, whether it’s you know, we can see that on the right we’ve got some benefit options PDF that we’re pulling some information from to be able to start that.

All right, next slide. So, our prompt actually gets turned into what you see on the screen there. You’re an assistant helps the company employees with their health care plan questions and questions about the employee handbook.

Be brief and answers and answer only with the facts listed. So, it gives us the ability to help shape what that looks like. All right, let’s jump over to that next slide.

We send over some additional context. You know, we’re looking at the PDFs that we found in this particular case. Now, this we’re talking PDFs here, but this could be emails, this could be Teams messages, this could be files, this could be anything that’s in your in your system.

All right, let’s jump over to that next slide. We put all of this together and we grabbed all of that information from our one sentence that we started and we’re able to bring all of that in there with the grounding data where we’re saying hey just look at these you know this particular PDF instead of everything that’s out there right jump over to the next one and from that we get a simple response of that the health plus offers coverage for emergency services, mental health and substance abuse coverage and out of network services which the standard health plan does not cover. So all of that happens in seconds.

All right, trying to remember do we have one more slide? All right, I believe that that is everything that I have for you guys and I think we’re going over to Jazelle for the next spot. Hello.

Hi, me again here. So, we got some updates where you can find Copilot. I know that you learn more the technical background a little bit like the layers of how we function and I will be sharing a few links for you to have a look whenever you have time because it’s a little bit like demos that takes around 10 minutes for you to watch and see.

So just I can maybe disclose for you what is the most common place where you can find copilot. So that’s bing. So if you go to your browser and then you open bing you can find copilot over there and then of course we do have an app so you can start to experience copilot with the app and from that you can see copilot how it’s function and of course it’s on in all the applications that we have you can see so let me share the link first of all so then you can go whenever you have time and then another reminder we do have a bubble here like for questions and we will be taking the questions.

So thank you and if you have questions drop it and then we will have time to to answer. Thank you. Hi, my name is Melissa Delgado and I am a program manager for Microsoft and I want to talk to you about usually how the program manager has challenges and they face and definitely with copilot as a program manager you’re charge of complex projects and have to coordinate with multiple teams specifically when you have ensured that all your team deliverables are on time and the coordination and management is done properly.

Ly. So with co-pilot we don’t only have to proceed with the project but we also have the coordination piece the management piece overseeing complex projects ensuring the deliverables are on time coordinate with multiple teams and also we track projects and maintain the communication. We have to facilitate the meetings.

We also need to ensure the discussions are correct and definitely and last but not least we are responsible for tracking the resources and allocation of time. If we can pass to the other one so I can show you for the for with co-pilot it helps us program managers like myself to manage our workload prioritize the task that we have at hand even for the week or the day and improve collaboration as well. It is used to automate mostly the routine tasks such as scheduling the meetings, sending sometimes reminders to other team members and provide real-time insights into project utilizations.

Let me show you in the next slide how I usually use it. During the morning, I just go in mostly Mondays to see how is my my weekly. Can you move the next slide?

Thank you. At the beginning of my day, I like to check some items like how my week looks like, how my day will be going and the meetings in so topics. So I leverage my daily reminders and it provides me with prompts.

So my co-pilot even helps me with default prompts that only with a click of a button I can definitely know what is going on. Either I want to ensure that I have meetings on on time or I want to know the latest about a topic. Perhaps I have to find a meeting on a topic because we have so many meetings every single day that perhaps is different.

It’s difficult for us to keep up. Sometimes we need to a little bit of help to write something and write in a split of the minute. So instead of me thinking about everything that I already know, I’m just prompting co-pilot for him to provide me with a little bit more information.

Also, if we have tons of acronyms, I also can click and decode those acronyms and make myself and my team definitely shine. So, if we go to the next slide, this is super quick. I’m I don’t want to take too much minute, but for the next slide, I’m going to show you the three main things that I usually use every single day and is my word, my PowerPoint, and I also use Copilot in my browser.

Those three are the main things that I use mostly for the word document. If I have a topic that I really want to make sure that I nailed all the single time, I will use it. I also use it for writing an agenda.

Let’s say for a preliminary 25 minute meeting before a project pitch. For the power PowerPoint. I create lots of documents for my team including maybe like a 30, 60 and 90 days on boarding plan for new hires employees.

That is super neat because not only they need to read a lot, then I can produce only slides for them to have the most important things they have to accomplish during that period. And then in the browser, I could definitely go and work with my engineering teams to have all info at hand right at the bat. And last but not least with my last slide please.

If you can move it. Thank you. Last but not least, we have some challenges as as program managers and we face numerous challenges such as managing conflicting priorities.

Also we have different projects with different business needs. So it’s important for us to be able to deal with unexpected issues and communicating with all the teams and stakeholders. C-Pilot helps me provide valuable insights and automating very time consuming task and that way I can focus on what matters me to me the most which is delivering successless projects and meeting expectation.

Well, back to you. So, I will give you a little bit more time to have Q&A. Thank you.

Awesome. Well, thank you all so much. I really appreciate that.

That was like information overload for me personally. But I know everyone in the chat based off of what I was seeing was resonating with what you were all sharing and and has a lot of questions about everything. So, I think it was very intriguing for everyone.

So we have a ton of time for Q&A, which is great. So, we’re really excited to answer your questions. Thank you so much to everyone who has already been putting questions into the Q&A section.

If you see the Q&A bubble, chat bubbles on the side, that’s where we’ll be answering your questions out loud. So, make sure to go in there, add any new questions that might come up, but then also make sure that you’re up voting using the up arrow on the questions that you definitely want to get answered. That’s kind of how we’ll be sorting through our questions that we answer today in the remaining time that we have.

So the first question that we have up on deck is if I want to learn Gen AI, where is a good place to start? Also, since Gen AI is a subset of AI, do you recommend learning AI first to build a foundation and then jump into Gen AI? And I’ll open this up to anybody.

I I can take this one. You can hear me, right? Yep.

Okay, good. So, I mean, depending on where you want to go, from my point of view, I I come from the the low code world with business application and we totally leverage Genai without having a foundation in machine learning. So, really depend of where where you want to what you want to do for a living, right?

Do you want to to work at building the model you know train training training the model etc or do you want to use them so that that’s the first thing I’ll say that identifying where you want to how do you want to use AI then the second I’ll say that on the openi website there’s a lot of great training documentation and the Microsoft website as well so that that will be a great place to start we have we have learning learning path covering the different subjects if you to start looking into machine learning as well. You can you can look at our azure AI fund fundamental certification for instance which is not super long certification but will give you a good idea of how what’s our product are offering in term of AI and then you can expand on it. We have different level of certification you can go through and with all with their learning paths that can you can follow through.

I love it. Thank you Samuel. No one has anything else to add.

We can move on to the next question. Awesome. Thanks for your question.

I think it was Raphael that that asked that. Okay. This question has a lot of up votes here.

Microsoft was first to invest in OpenAI after the launch of ChatGPT. Does Microsoft have its own GPT house or does it use OpenAI models under the hood for all of these co-pilots? And by the way, GitHub pilot is awesome and I use it every day.

Love to hear that. So we’re using we’re using OpenAI under the hood. Basically we invested in in OpenAI before before Chat GP was released.

Actually the version that everybody knows. I think we started like investing like four or five years ago. Don’t quote me on that.

I’m I’m not sure. But our relationship with OpenAI is a relationship from some times ago. And something that is interesting to know is that all the open AAI models are running on Azure infrastructure.

So we really have a partnership with them. If you’re using open ChatGPT from OpenAI directly, you’re basically using our services and the same the other way around. We’re using their model but on our infrastructure.

You’ll see a bit of difference between using copilot even if it’s built on top of GPT because as Jason has explained it with the rag pattern on top of it and the the boundaries that we’ve put to the model it will act differently than ChatGPT but this is basically chat GP4 in the background thanks again Samuel anyone else have anything to If not, I think Samuel did a great job with it. Yes, I agree. And yeah, if that doesn’t answer your question or if you have further questions about it, feel free, anyone can put some more questions in the Q&A.

But I think the next one is actually going to be for me, but if any of you on my lovely panel might know the answer to this, too. Feel free to chime in. But as a recruiter and a recruiter for software engineering, I think I can answer this one pretty well.

So the question is from Jevlon Beck. I hope I’m saying that correctly. I apologize if not.

But the question is what qualities or attributes make an applicant stand out during the selection process for the Microsoft Explorer program given that it doesn’t necessarily require prior experience? That is a great question. And yeah, if no one if you’re not aware of what the Explorer program is, it is a way to explore Microsoft.

Hence the name. So it’s basically an exploration of both software engineering and technical program management and it is specifically for students who are in their first or second year of college. So yeah, it’s very unlikely that you will have experience and we actually really you know are looking for candidates who don’t have a ton of experience.

If you already had multiple internships, it’s probably not the internship for you. So what we do look for in a candidate for the Explore program is really like a passion for technology. And that might not be through an internship, but that could be through the courses that you’re taking.

I mean, first things first, we are obviously looking for, you know, you to meet the required qualifications of the role. And I think the only qualifications are intro to computer science and calculus. So as long as we see those on your resume, and you answer that you’ve taken those, you’re on the right on the right track.

But in addition to that, I think we also want to see what other coursework you’re taking. Are you maybe involved in the classroom as a tutor or a teaching assistant or maybe even a research assistant? Anything that you’ve done on campus that shows your passion for technology?

If it’s maybe class projects or even side projects if you like to do projects on on your own time. I also like to see when you know people are and every recruiter might be different, but this is kind of what Microsoft in general looks for is extracurriculars. So are you involved in any student groups or organizations?

Do you attend conferences like CodePath? So you’re already, you know, one step ahead by being here. So I think things like that are what can make you stand out as an explore candidate.

Anything that kind of shows you’re really well well-rounded and have a passion for technology. That’s not actual internship experience. Hey, do you mind if I add one thing that helped me?

Please do it. All right. So, one of the big things that one of my recruiters told me when I was starting at Microsoft or going through that interview process was one of the big things that we value is a learnit all attitude, you know, not a know-it-all attitude.

You don’t have to know everything. It’s a matter of just going in and being willing and able to learn what the new thing is. Copilot’s been around for maybe 17 monthsish, something like that to the general public and here we are.

You know, it’s completely revolutionizing it. Absolutely. And our whole culture is centered around Yeah.

That growth mindset. So, I appreciate you mentioning that. Cool.

Okay, let me see. And yeah, continue to upvote on these questions in the Q&A. These are all really great questions.

So, if you see one that you really want answered, make sure to press the up arrow. The next question is also a recruiting related question. What does it mean in the Microsoft action center?

Which if you don’t know what that is, there’s an action center on the Microsoft career site where you can track real time all of your application statuses. So, the question is, what does it mean in Microsoft’s action center when an application status has transferred? That is a wonderful question and it’s a question we get all the time.

I I hope we’re going to exhibit a growth mindset and maybe make it a little bit more clear in our in our action center in the future to make it less confusing for candidates on what that actually means. So, we appreciate this question and the feedback. But essentially, it just means that you know when you have when we have a job posting on the career site, there might be multiple roles on the back end that are tied to that job posting.

So if you’re applying, let’s just say to the software engineering internship in Redmond, that doesn’t mean we and we just see one job posting for it. That doesn’t mean we’re only hiring one intern in Redmond. We’re probably hiring hundreds and hundreds from that one job posting.

So then on the back end, we kind of have to route the applications to different recruiters dashboards based off maybe your school or your location or what month you applied in. So that’s basically what the transferred means. So, if you applied to that software engineering internship in Redmond and then it says transferred to some other wreck name or requisition name, that just means it’s on the dashboard of a recruiter now, the appropriate recruiter that is going to be reviewing your application, but it’s the same job, same job description.

Nothing has changed at all. But it’s a really good question. So, it just means your your application is in review.

Awesome. Thanks for the question. Okay, cool.

So, another recruiting question and I don’t know if anyone here, you know, when you were going through your application process, if you felt like it took a long time to hear back on your application, maybe not, but it typically takes a really long time when you’re an early and profession candidate. So, the question is when should we expect to hear back once we’ve applied to new grad positions? And this goes I’m just going to broaden the question to any position.

Because most early in profession or university recruiting positions it can take a long time just due to the volume of applications that we receive. So it’s always our service level agreement or SLA to respond to all applications is 90 days or 3 months. So if you if it’s been two months since you applied like don’t lose hope.

You could still get selected. So just give us time. We really appreciate your patience.

So yeah, three months maximum. And if you don’t hear back within that 90day SLA, definitely submit a support ticket on the career site. That way you can say like, "Hey, it’s been longer than 90 days and I still haven’t heard or seen an update in my action center." then we’ll make sure we get an update to you on your application.

But yeah, that’s how long it takes to to hear back. But hopefully it’s sooner. Typically, it is sooner.

It’s just the longest it could possibly take. Good question. Let me refresh these votes and keep on up voting.

Okay, this is a good one. And I don’t know, Jason, Samuel, Jazelle, Melissa, were any of you referred to Microsoft by someone that you knew that worked here? I wasn’t.

No. Okay. None of us were. I was I was I was Oh, you were?

Okay, nice. Yeah, but I was not referred. I was say I was just told there are openings in Microsoft.

Please go there and apply and then I physically were but not referred within the system which is I think that you can explain that are two different things. Yep. Great call out.

So yes, same I was kind of in the same position as you Melissa. But the question is, is it true that getting into Microsoft is difficult without referrals or knowing someone who works there? I’ve attended several Microsoft events and met recruiters and most suggested trying to get referrals.

I don’t want to say that that person maybe steered you wrong. But they potentially steered you wrong. So, I would say it’s really not.

I mean, as you can see here on today today’s panel, none of us were actually referrals. And we’re all here at Microsoft. And I want to really emphasize that Microsoft is committed to a unbiased hiring process and an equitable hiring process.

And so if we prioritize referrals that would introduce bias into our hiring process. So while we do value referrals and we absolutely value what Microsoft employees have to say. So like Samuel, if you have a friend that you can vouch for their skills for a specific role and you referred them, we want to hear that.

So, like we do have an employee referral program for that where we can see that in all applications, but we don’t per se like prioritize them. So, we would never go into a job posting and say, "Let me filter for all of the referrals and we’re only going to look at them." we’re always choosing the most qualified candidate for the role no matter what. And then taking into account valuable feedback that our Microsoft employees have about the people that they’re referring.

So, definitely don’t wait to apply if you don’t have a referral. I get this question a lot too of like, should I apply yet? I don’t have a referral from anyone yet.

Definitely don’t wait. Apply. Apply as soon as you can.

You never know when job postings can get taken down. They typically are only up for a short period of time. So, you definitely want to apply and you can always get a referral later if you do have one, but I wouldn’t go seeking one out because they don’t really, you know, give you prioritization.

So, I hope that answered the question. And Sherma, can I can I say something about that as well? Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, okay. So, I remember when I was interviewing for Microsoft and I just want to let you know that don’t get intimidated if in the middle of waiting for that interview, you’re talking with a person that is on your left or your right and they actually have been referred and they’re about to go in because what gets you to the door doesn’t let don’t necessarily will let you in.

So everybody’s going to go to the same door to those have those interviews. But after the interview is the person that is sitting right there just being passionate at what you do like Jason said it’s not about what you know it’s what you’re willing to learn and what you will going to be impacting that team that you’re interviewing that will set you apart. So don’t get intimidated somebody said oh I was referred.

So don’t worry about that. I mean just be you and make sure that you have everything your equipment for you to sell yourself the right way. I love it.

Totally agree. Awesome. And then the next question that has a ton of up votes is when will the new gradu rolls be out and is there any event registration link to record that we were here?

So, one thing I want to mention and I think this was put in the chat earlier is the Microsoft career site is your source of truth for all current job postings or hire hiring that we’re doing. So, it’s updated regularly. So as soon as we have a new opening, it’ll be posted on the career site.

And typically on the job description, we will say because it’s a new law, there’s al new laws in recruiting, that we have to put the date that we plan to take the job posting down or if it’s going to be accepting applicants on like an ongoing basis. So, you can actually see like you have until this date to apply or we will accept it on an ongoing basis. I’m pretty sure there’s definitely new gradules on the career site as we speak.

So definitely go to the career site and apply as soon as you can. And then roles are typically posted at different times throughout the year. You know, there might be roles posted now, they might be roles posted in a couple months.

So, always set up job alerts. That’s my recommendation. You can set up the filters that you want and then get notific email notifications as soon as a job is posted that match your filters.

And then for the event registration link to record that you’re here. I mean, as a sponsor, Microsoft does have access to a list of attendees at EEES. So, I I think that being here, I don’t think there’s anything additional that you need to to do or fill out.

So no worries on that regard. And then, okay, and this might be a good question for for you all, Melissa, Jason, Jazelle, Samuel. Could we have some advice for technical interviews for a software engineering intern position?

And this could we can make this a little bit more general, like any technical interviewing or interviewing advice that you have. Yeah, I can start off with that. When I had my interview and we went into the technical side one of the big things that I was going through was I wasn’t afraid to say I don’t know which you know might be a little bit different than some of the other interviews that you’ve done where you you know you almost expected to know everything or most things you know about a job and you know the gentleman that interviewed me he grilled me it was about a 45minute interview and he asked me what my knowledge was on probably about 20 or 30 different subjects and then asked me questions at that level to be able to answer it.

And it was a little a little nerve-wracking, you know, like most interviews are, but it was nice to be able to kind of customize that and be okay to say, "Hey, I don’t have an answer, but this is where I would start." That was one thing that I always kind of followed it up with. So even if I didn’t know the exact answer by memory, we at least have that starting point to go and start looking. I love it.

Thank you, Jason. I can have a also I am a non-technical person but I work with engineering teams every single day. So that is also a little bit challenging.

But when I am interviewing not only to work for Microsoft but within Microsoft you also interview to go to other teams and other organizations. So when that time comes I always prepare myself for that role. I do my homework.

I dig a little deep. I check into the industry and what are the things that are going on in the industry and make sure that I’m equipped myself with the knowledge or at least the the the way that I can communicate about those new things that are going on in the industry. At least I can talk about them and like Jason said at least in Microsoft we have a culture that I mean if you don’t know it just say that you don’t know it but you’re willing to learn and that’s good I mean if you’re willing to learn that as well I would recommend also whenever you go into that point to include or ask about scenario questions so they can give you in a scenario you can and you can identify how would you react how would you do in that particular situation that will help you a lot versus maybe the next person that is going to sit in that chair are only going to be talking about their qualifications where you’re not only going to be talking about your qualifications, but that you know what you have situational awareness of your industry.

Just want to put that right there. I love it. Thank you, Melissa and Jason.

That was really great advice and that’s all advice I would give my candidates too. The last thing I’ll add before we go to our very last question is I think the biggest hiccup that we see candidates go through in their technical interviews is failing to talk through their thought process which I think Jason kind of touched on that Melissa you touched on that too like having a growth mindset admitting when you don’t know something. But then yeah also communicating and collaborating.

Collaboration is one of our core competencies at Microsoft, which you can see all of our hiring tips for both technical and all interviews on our career site under the hiring tips. But we list out all of the core competencies that we’re looking for in all interviews and collaboration is one of them. So a common mishap that we see candidates do is they kind of freeze up when they’re, you know, doing their coding question or or they’re not explaining anything that they’re doing.

They’re kind of just silent. So which is totally understandable given nerves and the the scenario. But I think it’s best to just kind of talk through the interview or your thought process with the interviewer.

They want you to succeed. They want to hear how you’re thinking. They want to hear how you could potentially collaborate on a real life project or product or service at Microsoft.

So make sure you always talk through your thought process and share and show that you’re a good collaborator essentially. Awesome. Well, last question before we leave.

And I think this is a really great one is what’s one piece of advice that you’d give to attendees who are at the beginning of their tech career. Maybe I can take that. Yeah.

As I mentioned, I did not mention, I mentioned in the beginning, I’m a a support evangelist. So I work with the companies, early companies and multiple teams, technical teams, a lot of software engineers and partner technical consultants. I do also work with people in the early career.

And what I like to advise people is to be yourself. Just be you. The moment you start into the interview, just be yourself and just be true to yourself.

And then what Jason also mentioned is like if you don’t know something is fine. And always be willing to learn. So that’s something that in my career also starting at Microsoft I learned to keep learning, keep asking questions, be yourself and don’t be afraid to show who you are and we are all like kind of a large community in all over the world.

And then that’s maybe my piece of advice. Just be yourself. I love that.

Thank you. Anything else anyone wants to add as a last thought or piece of advice for all of our emerging engineers? I think that GEL just nailed it with being yourself.

But sometimes people ask, okay, I’m being myself, but nothing is going on. I mean, that that’s okay. I mean, maybe that’s not the door for you at that moment, but it it will open.

And I have had a couple of my colleagues that said, you know what, I interview one day, but they didn’t they didn’t hire me. But then the hiring manager because he was interviewing me he just thought you know later on I had an opportunity and I remember your interview so he went back and called her. So sometimes when we are not hired maybe that’s not the door and then there’s going to be a window opening but the important is that when within the interviewing process you’re also practicing your pitch right you’re pitching yourself to a company you’re pitching yourself and ensuring that you have what it takes to go to the next level.

So always be yourself. Embrace who you are. Embrace your culture as well because that we like diversity and this industry.

The industry of technology is very diverse and it doesn’t matter where you’re sitting in which region in which location. The technology industry only cares about what you know and what you can bring an impact to the table. So always keep that in mind.

With that, that’s a mic drop. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Please drop your appreciation in the chat for our phenomenal panelists. I just learned about Copilot. I feel like now I’m technical.

So much to everybody. We This was truly a worldwide panel. We have people from Australia.

We have people from Seattle. We have people everywhere. Which I really think represents Microsoft.

Again, the diversity of both your experiences, your advice was just fantastic. Can’t thank you enough. Please drop your gratitude in the chat.

Microsoft is a sponsor of this event. You’ll have multiple opportunities to connect with them. And so really just want to thank all of our panelists today.

As a reminder, please complete the feedback survey. Share what you thought about the session. And next up is our networking break.

So we’ll go to a brief video from Bobby D. And thank you so much for attending the session and thanks to all of our great panelists. Take care everyone.

Thank you so much. Thank you everyone. Byebye.

Thanks everyone. Next up we have network breaks. And remember here’s a nuggets.

Your network is your net worth. So hopefully you hear that Jim. But here’s some information I want you all to remember.

You can access the network lounge or visit the company’s booths during this break. This is a great time to connect with companies and each other. So, we encourage you to go visit the spaces and build connections.