Adriana Reyes
Topics of Interest: Software Engineering, Product Management, Microsoft, Texas CSB, ROTC
“Throw your hat in the ring and just apply.” This is what Adriana Reyes advises fellow Canfield Business Honors Students to do when looking for internship opportunities. Not only did Adriana land a position as an Explore Intern at Microsoft after her freshman year, but she also enlisted in the National Guard as an ROTC before her time at UT even started. Adriana is currently a sophomore in the Texas CSB Program, and she plans on returning to Microsoft this upcoming summer.
Adriana remembers not exactly knowing what she was getting herself into when she blindly submitted her resume for an internship with Microsoft. “It’s just a really big company,” she said. However, once she got in contact with a personal mentor and the recruiter, she says that she thoroughly enjoyed the whole process. Read on to find out more about Adriana’s experiences at Microsoft and some more advice she has for fellow students!
Tell us about yourself.
My name is Adriana, and I’m a sophomore in CSB. I’m also an Army ROTC in the National Guard. I enlisted in the National Guard during the summer of 2020, so right after I graduated high school. Then, ROTC started once I began at UT. I’m also in the Hispanic Association for Computer Scientists (HACS). For fun, I like to play soccer and go running.
What did the process look like for you to get your internship with Microsoft as a software engineer?
Before freshmen year started in August, I blindly submitted my resume for the Explore Internship. Simultaneously, I got matched with a mentor through HACS who had interned at Microsoft in prior years. I never really heard anything back from blindly submitting my resume, but after talking to my mentor, she put me in touch with her recruiter. I then got my first interview as a 30-minute phone call. This interview was mostly behavioral questions and a couple product management questions. My last round was an hour and a half technical interview, which mostly consisted of data structures questions. They let you pick whatever language you want to work with, so I chose Java. After all this, I secured the position in December of that year.
What did some of your responsibilities look like?
As freshmen and sophomores, we were Explore Interns. I was put into a group of three with two other interns from start to finish of the program. The goal of the internship was to be exposed to the product management and software engineering aspects of the business. For the first couple of weeks, we worked on designing a web app. We were meeting with designers and working on the software Figma to plan out what the app was going to look like. I was also getting feedback from my team and managers just to make the app look appealing. After about three weeks of this planning phase, we started developing. We were using React to plan the website and NPM to build it. This phase consisted of many code reviews. The whole internship was remote, so it was important to communicate with the other interns on my team effectively.
How helpful were your daily standups to get your questions answers and talk with your team, including your boss?
Our morning standup included the whole organization, so it was interesting to see what the other people were working on. Outside of those meetings, I didn’t really work with anyone else regularly except my team, so it was nice to see other people’s projects. In the afternoon, each group of three interns was matched with a manager and a mentor. It was during these meetings that we’d get our technical questions answered and find all the right access points. In general, though, everyone was almost always available. I also had a one-on-one with my manager every week to touch base, make sure I was meeting expectations, and possibly find some areas for improvement. Finally, there were three check-ins throughout the summer for which I submitted a paper explaining what I had done in the past couple weeks. I enjoyed writing these papers because they kept me accountable and let me display the work that I had been doing recently.
What surprised you most working for Microsoft?
Since it’s such a big company, I thought some things might get lost in translation. However, I found that being in that group of three interns really helped me. In general, I was able to stay within my organization. I did network with some other people from the VR team and from Xbox, but there were plenty of activities and stuff that you do within my own organization. I was also placed into a large group where I got to meet more people. I’m sure if I was in person, it would have been even easier, but even being remote I found it fairly easy to find people to talk to.
What was your favorite part about the internship and what were some of your biggest takeaways?
One of my favorite parts of the internship was the Intern Expo experience at the end. At this event, we got to show some of the designers who we had been planning our web app with from day one what we had been working on. As the three of us were presenting, I remember hearing things like “Oh, wow! We didn’t think you were going to get this feature in.” It was super fulfilling to get that feedback from the people who had helped us from day one. I also think my biggest takeaway was the importance of networking. During your first year of interning, you get placed somewhat randomly. But if you want to come back, you can network with different organizations within the company. For example, I thought the main VR headset for Microsoft was Oculus, but I didn’t realize they also have HoloLens, which is something I got to learn a lot more about.
What piece of advice would you offer to other CBHP students based on your internship experience?
I would just say always throw your hat in the ring and apply. All I did was blindly submit my resume and start talking to people. I remember thinking that Microsoft was too big of a company and there was no way, but it was really cool to actually go through the whole process of securing an internship. Even for the first interview I remember being so excited. Just see what you can apply for and don’t think it’s too big of a deal.
