Chances of Coop at Microsoft

[desertfox]

Hello guys, I havent visit this forum in a long time. The last time I asked a question was one year ago when I was asking whether I could get in waterloo. Well right now im Second year Compsci coop, got 1 term of coop done and will be cooping at IBM in January. Yesterday I had a talk with a friend and I was told that to get into Microsoft you need high gpa. My marks are below 3.0, Im just wondering would that affect my chances if I apply to Microsoft in the future. Would IBM make your resume attractive to Microsoft, or some of the Tier-1 Computer Company. BTW I will be working as Java Developer and I would generally want to work as a back end developer. Thanks

Best of regards from Dan

[Tony]

There are two parts to getting those positions:

chance of landing an interview. That would depend on how attractive your resume looks (work experience + personal projects), your grades, and introductions (having a reference from within the company). One area could make up for another.

skills of actually passing the interview. You simply have to be good enough to pass the skills bar in algorithms and data structures. Basically CS 341 material.

[desertfox]

Hey Tony thanks for the quicky reply, but does having IBM on the resume help alot if I were to apply to Microsoft?

[Tony]

Doing what at IBM vs. what at where-else? It's certainly better than no experience; not sure how much name recognition you'd get, unless you are already at Google/Amazon/Microsoft level.

[SmokeMonster]

Yes the work experience will almost certainly help over having no experience. From what I know for a lot of companies the GPA is not that big of a deal as long as you are above a certain cutoff, so if you are worried about the GPA you are only in second year, it's not impossible to boost your GPA.