Duong Ha Anh, a senior in Computer Science at Brown University (USA), received news of her acceptance into the Software Engineer position at Microsoft a few months ago. The girl born in 2002 will join this technology giant this summer, right after graduating from university. “To prepare for this, I started my journey right from my first year, and I had to send hundreds of letters asking for internships within 3 years,” Ha Anh said.

Duong Ha Anh, senior student majoring in Computer Science at Brown University

Before being accepted and receiving a full scholarship to Brown University, a school in the prestigious Ivy League, the former student of Hanoi - Amsterdam High School for the Gifted spent 2 years studying in China thanks to a scholarship from UWC (United World College). During this time, Ha Anh thought she would pursue economics and painting. The summer before entering university, the female student felt that it was not suitable, so she decided to switch to Computer Science. Since her first year, she has actively worked as a teaching assistant in many specialized subjects at the school, regularly tinkered with programming to improve her skills and participated in the school's professional clubs such as game development, virtual reality... Because she did not have many skills and experience, in the summer of her first year, Ha Anh returned to Vietnam to apply for an internship at a Vietnamese company to "strengthen" her profile. "Most of my seniors advised me to do an internship early to gain experience, however, applying for an internship position during my first year in the US is relatively difficult," Ha Anh said. It wasn’t until the summer of her sophomore year that Ha Anh began to apply for internships at American companies, in her field of study: software engineering. The Vietnamese student mainly searched for information via Linkedin and sent out over 200 resumes. However, only one of them responded. That person was a human resources specialist at the technology transportation service company Uber. After the interview round, Ha Anh was officially accepted.

Before being accepted to Microsoft, Ha Anh worked as an intern at Uber (Photo: NVCC)

After that, Ha Anh interned here as a Software Engineer intern. The Vietnamese girl participated in creating an internal support tool to provide information about trips, customers and drivers. Working for the first time at a professional company, Ha Anh felt "overwhelmed" but also gradually "broke out" the company's operating process and the stages in a project. "I realized that the knowledge I learned at school somewhat 'matched' the actual requirements of the job, such as finding errors in code, but there were also many things I had to learn on my own because the university did not teach them," Ha Anh said. After 3 months of internship, returning to study, she realized that she had to improve her knowledge in different fields to expand her skills. Also thanks to her experience at Uber, in the next internship, Ha Anh received more emails in response, including from Apple. She had to go through 3 rounds including testing her thinking, logic, coding and situation handling skills. When applying to large companies, Ha Anh believes that having a personal project is very necessary. For example, when applying to Apple, the Vietnamese girl shared about the project "simulating the physics of water" that she coded herself, thereby impressing the recruiting unit. As an Apple software engineer intern, Ha Anh was assigned to the team in charge of image features for some products. For about 15 weeks, she participated in a project to improve the experience of viewing 3D photos and videos for Vision Pro glasses users, through artificial intelligence applications. Working at Apple, there were times when Ha Anh had to work 12-13 hours/day while running the project. Despite the pressure, thanks to that, she learned many more skills and programming languages ​​to meet the job requirements.

The girl born in 2002 will join the technology giant this summer. (Photo: NVCC)

In August 2024, when companies started to "hunt" for employees, Ha Anh proactively looked for official positions. This time, she sent out about 80 applications, focusing on large companies. Although she had not graduated yet, Ha Anh still made it to the final interview round of several companies. "The interview style and culture of the companies are very different. It is very normal for one company to be suitable but not another," Ha Anh said. The female student said she did not feel too disappointed when she was rejected. In particular, Microsoft's recruitment round has an online test about 2 hours long, related to logic and programming. After that, Ha Anh was interviewed by a leader and two engineers, each for an hour, mainly testing the candidate's knowledge, orientation, and projects, along with some hypothetical situations. "In addition, they are very interested in the candidate's passion for work, progress, determination, and learning spirit," Ha Anh shared. Thanks to her experience and early preparation, she passed Microsoft's rigorous recruitment rounds even though she had not yet graduated from college. "I was very surprised when I received the invitation letter from Microsoft. I felt relieved because I no longer had to worry about work after graduation," the female student said. In the job invitation letter, in addition to salary, Ha Anh will be sponsored for an H1-B visa (temporary work visa). She will start working here right after graduation. "The technology sector in the US is quite developed. Therefore, I want to gain more experience and supplement my specialized knowledge related to computer hardware before officially working in the US," Ha Anh shared.

Vietnamnet.vn

Source: https://vietnamnet.vn/nu-sinh-viet-duoc-microsoft-nhan-vao-du-chua-tot-nghiep-dai-hoc-2361452.html