Kristian Kristensen’s Blog

Monday morning I arrived at Microsoft in Hellerup ready for my first week. I received a mighty Lenovo laptop, a temporary mobile phone, plus some other stuff. I didn’t spend much time at the desk since I had New Employee Orientation for the rest of the day. This was mainly comprised of different introductions to all kinds of necessary stuff. HR, Finance, IT, etc. This included a bunch of links and internal tools which you need in order to do your job. This is a fact I’ve noticed already. There’s a tool for everything at Microsoft!
Tuesday included more practical stuff, including ordering business cards. The rest of this day and most of the rest of week ones days were spend doing online training. There’s all kinds of online training you have to take in your first weeks at Microsoft. I’ve been told this will continue onwards. So I’ve been doing business training, procurement, licensing, all kinds of stuff.
During the week I’ve also gained a deeper understanding of what I’ll be going through and attending throughout 2008. Some dates for courses, etc. are starting to settle and it looks mighty cool.
In keeping with the spirit of Microsoft Corp there’s free soda. And other perks includes a newly inaugurated shuttle bus between Hellerup train station and the office in the morning and afternoon. This saves you from a 10 minute walk However, it is rather nice when the weather is bad.

Friday was a cool day. This day I received my SmartCard aka the Blue Badge. The SmartCard is used to access the Corporate network when at home or on the road. It includes a picture of the employee, the name, and employee number. Around the picture there’s a colored border. For Full Time Employee’s (FTE’s) this border is blue. Hence being a blue badge means you’re an FTE. Other types of employees have different border colors. So receiving this card meant that I am now a true Microsoft FTE. I like it.

So what am I doing at Microsoft? I’m participating in the Next Generation (NG) Consultant program, which is a superset of the Microsoft Academy for College Hires (MACH) program. NG is a cooperation between the Microsoft subs in Denmark and Holland. MACH is a kind of trainee position within different departments including Sales, Marketing and Services. I’m participating in the latter, which is the consulting division. MACH includes all kinds of training and support to help you get up to speed with your job at Microsoft. There’s more information on MACH at the EMEA site.

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