A continuing partnership between Vision Australia and Microsoft recently gave a group of young clients the chance to learn what it’s like to work for the tech giant.
After a similar successful event in 2022, the group of Vision Australia clients were treated to a tour of Microsoft’s Brisbane offices and the chance to hear from Microsoft staff about their work.
The day began with introductions and an overview of the facilities at the office, including braille signage on the walls, an Xbox in the kitchen, an extensive recycling system and much more.
Caption: Vision Australia clients enjoyed the chance to learn about life at Microsoft
Former Vision Australia employee and now Microsoft global partner for solutions and systems then spoke to the participants about his diagnosis with retinitis pigmentosa and his career transition from studying medicine, then law, then into computer science.
Kenny shared his passion for the various roles he has held at Microsoft and some advice for around pursuing a career.
Kenny’s hot tips:
- Leverage your networking skills. Kenny said that building his confidence really helped him gain knowledge and influence to get the roles he was interested in.
- Connect with people and learn from others about the role you want.
- Understand the market need for the type of work you’re interested in.
- Learn touch typing and get a solid baseline in your adaptive technology skills.
Kenny said one of the best things about working at Microsoft is being able to access a visual assistant to help him to do specific tasks at work.
The next session was virtually presented by Joanne Hayek on cyber security. Joanne delivered an interactive session on warding against scammers, hackers and anyone that wants your data! Everyone learnt a lot more about cookies, phishing, malware, data breaches, secure browsing, multifactor authentication and more.
The group then took in presentation by Tim Allen about Microsoft’s graduate training program with a resounding yes from the participants who all want to work at Microsoft. Tim’s message was there isn’t only one pathway to working in IT. “Build, create and be inquisitive,” was Tim’s advice.
To close the day, Dewi Wahyuni and Byron Mejia presented on their digital video editor Clipchamp. Dewi and Byron spoke extensively about the design phase of the program and how they considered accessibility as part of that.