When they come to Microsoft on internships, what are the first workplace skills that these students have to cultivate?

“Without the internship, I might not have realized the paramount importance of three things: professionalism, interpersonal skills, and the ability to handle stress,” remarks ­Chang Zi­zhu, an assistant brand manager at Glaxo­Smith­Kline Taiwan who was a Microsoft intern in 2005.

The first lesson that Microsoft Taiwan teaches is how to stand up again after falling down when confronted with setbacks.

Vincent Shih, chief legal officer for Microsoft Taiwan, notes that hard work correlates closely with achievement when you’re in school, but in the workplace even all-out effort won’t necessarily bring the desired results. “The ‘soft skills’ of resisting stress and being patient in the face of adversity are keys to surviving and thriving in the workplace.”

Microsoft Taiwan’s ­ultimate goal for its internship ­program is to sow the seeds of ­talent development at every ­university in Taiwan. The photo shows the program’s ­leadership camp in 2012.

Microsoft Taiwan’s student internship program has been in existence for a decade. Bringing in close to 100 interns for training that lasts nearly a year, it is the largest and oldest of all of Taiwan’s student internship programs.

The program arose spontaneously from a brainstorming session. In 2004 several high-ranking Microsoft executives had a discussion about how many of their colleagues’ sons and daughters were graduating college and struggling to plan their careers when finding very few internship opportunities in Taiwan. They thought: Why not let Microsoft take a leading role in reducing the distance between industry and academia?

To get the program up and running, Microsoft mobilized its entire staff. First, they looked at all of the jobs they were contracting to outside firms. Then the various departments were invited to list the areas where they lacked personnel. Finally, the company developed a program for directing student interns via company “mentors” and a “master–apprentice” system.

Grace ­Chang, senior community affairs manager at Microsoft Taiwan, acknowledges that some staffers were skeptical: “Why should we be cultivating talent for other firms?” they asked. Eventually, Chang and her legal and corporate affairs department colleagues were able to persuade the skeptics that helping to cultivate talent for Taiwan industry was the company’s social responsibility, and that the effort would garner favorable public recognition.

To prevent the interns from coming from only a few select schools, Microsoft established guidelines that prohibited screening based on department, university or transcript. Microsoft hired the personnel firm 104 Job Bank, which filters applicants and holds the first round of face-to-face interviews. Then Chang and her department colleagues conduct more than 400 interviews in later rounds.

There aren’t trick exam questions to cull the ranks of applicants. Instead, the process relies entirely on interview performance­. On average the program receives 3000–4000 résumés each year, from which only about 100 become interns. That’s an acceptance rate of only 4%.

Whereas many companies view internships as a means of recruiting workers, Microsoft is notable for making a rather contrary promise to its interns: “When your internships are over, none of you will be hired.”

Vincent Shih explains that Microsoft doesn’t want its interns to be focused excessively on getting hired and lose sight of the basic educational nature of the experience.

Before they formally start work, the interns must undergo a month of general training, which covers more than 20 kinds of professional and communication skills. Based on their interests and abilities, the interns are then dispatched to work in one of four departments: research and development, marketing, administration or product promotions. There they are assigned special projects to carry out. The interns, who remain enrolled at university, work 20 hours a week at minimum wage.

Lasting as long as a year, Microsoft’s internships have allowed quite a few college students to discover their true talents and career directions. These internships have become among the most hotly sought-after career development opportunities for university students in Taiwan.

Launched 10 years ago, Microsoft Taiwan’s student ­internship program has given workplace training to nearly 1000 students so far. These opportunities to gain real experience in the workplace are highly competitive and hotly sought after.

National Taiwan University graduate ­Chang Zi­zhu, 29, studied philosophy, which is widely regarded as an unpopular field among employers. What’s more, his father’s business had failed, so he was acutely aware of the difficulties that the job market might pose.

When he was a sophomore ­Chang filled out the application for a student internship at Microsoft and was called in for an interview. The interviewer didn’t beat around the bush: “What makes you think you’re qualified to work at Microsoft?” ­Chang replied, “Philosophy cultivates powers of logic, which are also strongly emphasized in programming.” The answer met with approval.

Chang’s first assignment involved hosting various activities promoting games for Microsoft’s Xbox. At university ­Chang had served as vice president of the guitar club and played in several bands. Used to being on stage and highly animated by nature, ­Chang really got the crowd revved up at the first promotion he co-hosted. Although he had thought the event was a success, the senior intern he was working with reminded him to keep track of time to prevent delays in the overall program.

At the second promotion, the hubbub and excitement caused him to lose track of time once again. Consequently, that senior intern got up on stage to cut him off just as he had pulled out prizes to throw into the audience. It was quite awkward and embarrassing.

Chang felt upset afterwards. But after coolly considering the situation, he asked himself a question: If the story were reenacted with someone else acting exactly has he had, would his colleague have had the same reaction? The certain affirmative answer pulled ­Chang from wallowing in self pity and taught him an important workplace lesson about not taking things personally but rather judging things on their own merits.

After this internship, ­Chang went on while still at NTU to have internships at a public relations firm and ­PepsiCo Foods Taiwan, where he was responsible for putting on promotions for tortilla chips and other products.

Chang asked his boss at ­PepsiCo why he had been hired, since he wasn’t a business major. His boss explained that his internship at Microsoft had been a big point in his favor. What’s more, both were foreign companies with similar corporate cultures, so it was thought that he would quickly catch on.

In 2011, ­Chang was hired as a regular staffer at Glaxo­Smith­Kline Taiwan. Among his first tasks was to promote Paradontax toothpaste. On his watch sales increased 70%, and he was quickly promoted to assistant brand manager.

Not being deterred by the unpopularity of his field of study, ­Chang learned crisis management by overcoming the obstacles he encountered and smoothly attained employment in his dream field of marketing. His experiences bear witness to a point made by his mentor at Microsoft: In marketing, one’s experiences are more important than one’s degree.

A philosophy major, Chang Zhizhu (left) had several internships while in college. Today he works in marketing for a foreign pharmaceutical firm. Joy Liu (facing page), who speaks English fluently, hasn’t wasted any opportunity to hone her career skills. Thanks to the initiative she showed in this regard, she now brims with confidence in the workplace.

A graduate of National Taiwan Normal University’s English department, Joy Liu now works as a senior customer manager for Procter & Gamble Taiwan. In 2006 she had an internship with Microsoft.

Now aged 28, Liu emigrated to Canada as a child. When she was 17, her father lost his job and was forced to cut short her education in Canada. She returned to Taiwan and enrolled in a private high school. Relying on her excellent English, Liu was accepted to study English at National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU).

Not wanting to teach, she actively worked to build her job skills. As a first-year student, she audited business administration classes at NTU. As a sophomore, she showed even more initiative in looking for internship opportunities. As soon as she heard that Microsoft had an internship program, she immediately wrote up a four-page résumé and submitted an application.

Placed in the legal and corporate affairs department as an administrative assistant, she was at first assigned to sort out letters from the police requesting Microsoft’s assistance in investigations of cybercrime cases. She also helped her superiors organize both Chinese and English document files.

Since she was largely raised overseas and had taken courses in English writing, Liu at first had no worries about her English language abilities. It wasn’t until she got a draft back from her boss covered with all manner of corrections that she understood that her book learning hadn’t prepared her sufficiently for the tough demands of the working world.

After her boss gave her some pointers, Liu worked hard at learning from her mistakes. Gradually she earned the approval of her boss and was given greater responsibilities. When the Microsoft headquarters in the United States started building a global crime database, she was assigned responsibility for the Taiwan end of the project. On her own, she gathered data and familiarized herself with the system. After spending two weeks on the project, she completed a manual of several dozen pages that outlined the standard operating procedures to use with the system.

From that moment, Liu gradually began to rebuild her confidence. At one point the marketing department asked interns to help develop plans for Windows Vista. She immediately thought of Su Yi­jie, an NTNU graduate who was a star in Taiwan’s professional basketball league. What’s more, another member of her group at Microsoft knew Smile Weng, a singing star who was enrolled at NTU. Liu proposed harnessing the popularity of the two stars to promote Windows Vista via an online voting campaign. The dynamic and innovative plan was well received by her superiors, taking first place among all plans submitted by interns.

In the summer of that year, she garnered an internship at P&G, where she was subsequently able to gain formal employment thanks in large part to the recommendations of her boss at Microsoft.

Holding a “just do it” attitude, Liu acknowledges that she has had a lot of luck throughout the process, luck that extends even to the frustrations and obstacles she has encountered. Looking back on those setbacks, she believes that if she hadn’t been confronted with those problems she wouldn’t have developed the toughness and broader horizons that she now possesses.

The guiding principle behind Microsoft’s internship program is the following: “The workplace isn’t a campus or a cram school. Your superiors can only train you; they can’t teach you everything. You can’t come in with an attitude that you are an empty cup and expect to be filled to the brim.” Arriving with insufficient experience and skills is to be expected, but you can’t demonstrate a passive attitude or an unwillingness to prepare yourself as best you can, because the workplace is a lot like a battlefield: At the very least you’ve got to be willing to march into battle shoulder to shoulder with the other members of your team.

In implementing its internship program, Microsoft hasn’t shown any qualms about developing talented workers that other companies will end up employing. Instead, the company is helping young people to take their first steps into the arena of the workplace, allowing them to conquer their fears about exploring the distant unknown.