How to become Cloud Solution Architect : My journey till Microsoft (Part-1)

After I joined Microsoft, I got a lot of questions from a wider audience asking me how I got into Microsoft, what advice I could give, etc. In today’s blog post, I’ll share my personal advice on the most frequently asked questions that can help you plan your next move.

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How to get started?

Have a goal.
Ask yourself why do you really want to join Microsoft? Is it because of the brand value or the team or the position? Neither the salary, whatever it may be for good reasons because that’s what keeps you motivated to plan your next steps.

Be consistent.
Be consistent in learning, and applying for the roles once you are ready. Explore relevant roles through our careers website and don’t feel bad if it’s a miss and you didn’t hear from the recruiter, I think there’s a way to stand out.
Try to build your resume strong and be more elaborate in writing your project experiences. In my upcoming blog, I’ll be sharing key tips for improving your chances of getting shortlisted by improving your resume writing skills. Stay tuned !!

How should I prepare for a technical interview?

So let’s try to understand what are the areas that these technical interviews cover from the candidate? Through, these interviews companies basically assess problem-solving and behavioral skills.
So what are problem-solving skills really meant for? Well, in my case when I’m being interviewed for an architect role, my problem-solving skills for my role would be transforming the business use cases into technical solutions. That means to say that I need to modularize the existing business use cases into small use cases and try creating system designs for each of these use cases to have an integrated solution for the customer. For this, you need to have a well-versed understanding of multiple areas including networking, automation, DevOps, microservices, databases, etc. and it will defer from role to role.
So let’s try to understand what behavioral skills would be. Behavioral skills would be your nontechnical capabilities, especially when it comes to customer interaction, leadership, project management, trade-offs, budgeting, communication. You might be wondering why behavioral interviews are very important because most of the top tech companies believe that communication is the effective key to succeed in an organization and most of the roles in this kind of company can be customer-facing. Especially if you have been interviewed for customer-facing roles, behavioral skills do matter a lot.

Now let me give you some tips for the preparation for your technical interview.

So the first key thing would be clear on your basics. As soon as the interview is scheduled. Try to check with your recruiter on the interview guide because that will help you to stay focused and prepare on the basics for their respective topics. I believe most of the applicants
fail in this round because of the lack of the right preparation process. Don’t hesitate in communicating to the recruiter that you need a bit more time for the interview preparation, especially during the interview schedule.

A second key tip is to be open and transparent. Always expect the unexpected. So sometimes during the interviews, you might face unexpected questions that you don’t know or never came across during your experience. Don’t hesitate to say I don’t know rather than getting stumbled.

The third key tip is to be confident enough in your communication. So most of the interviews at the top tech companies are going to be face to face. Even if it’s a virtual interview. Try to be on video and be confident enough in presenting your answer.

References:
I'm writing on medium, please follow my article at How to become Cloud Solution Architect : My journey till Microsoft (Part-1) | by Musunuru Sharmila | Jul, 2022 | Medium