a junior college graduate from an ordinary private college is now on the microsoft staff roll. ninety per cent of microsoft employees hold a doctorate or master's degree. what is the secret of her success? interviewed her on july 27 at the microsoft office in beijing.
li wenyi at the office.
li wenyi feels lucky to have won the chance to intern at microsoft after passing through a professional exam, a translation test, a telephone interview and collective training and interviews at the beijing microsoft headquarters.
li was involved in the software department of her college, the nanyang institute of technology, and has won a number of awards for organizing college activities. she entered the microsoft helpdesk technique-support training course in june 2008, along with other 49 students, many of who were sophomores or juniors from prestigious universities.
li learned a lot in the training sessions and earned the top score in a speech contest in her group, which won her a two-month internship, along with 30 others.
li started the internship by labeling cables. she told the website there was a lot of pressure that gave her motivation and a desire to learn and grow.
she wrote in her diary "in my opinion, microsoft is more like a big family rather than an enterprise, and i am a child in that family. i was an infant when i first started, knowing nothing about the work, and microsoft was like my father. i was always afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing. but now i feel at home. i am growing and making sense of the work."
six weeks later, li was permitted to provide technical support in interior departments.
li was taken on the microsoft payroll in june and to her surprise she received a much higher salary than the 1,500 yuan she had been paid during the internship.
hu jungao, li's manager, told the website there are 40,000 students majoring in software studies in china, and 30,000 of them are taking microsoft curricula and only three of them will be hired by the world software giant this year.
according to hu, many of li's competitors are students from the country's top universities such as tsinghua and zhejiang. li thinks highly of microsoft's hiring policies that don't rely solely on diplomas and professional skills.
"we only have six-month contracts. an employee will have to leave after that if he or she doesn't meet the company's standard," li said. she said she is determined to work even harder.
at 7 o'clock on july 27, after most of her colleagues had left, li was still in the office, making a summary of the day's work and drawing plans for the next day.
"the company provides a fairly easy and free work environment, but everybody works hard," li said. "they have apartments and cars and everything. what does a man work for if he doesn't need more money?" maybe the answer lies in microsoft's corporate culture.
"my life at microsoft has just begun. there is a long way to go," she said.
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