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  • ICT

Students to Business: a worldwide internship portal

Microsoft’s portal connecting students, universities and partner companies through internships and first jobs. We followed it from 2006 to 2011, from the first version to worldwide operations.

5 yearsalongside Microsoft, 2006 to 2011
5continents
~100countries where the portal was active
15languages, including Arabic, Chinese and Korean
16,000+students registered in a single instance

What Students to Business was

A Microsoft programme to shorten the distance between university and work. IT students found internships on real projects with Microsoft partner companies; companies found young people already trained on the technologies they used every day; universities followed their students’ progress. For many, the internship was the first step towards being hired.

The portal was where all this happened: profiles, openings, applications, interviews, internships and final evaluations, country by country.

The portal home page in 2010, with language selection including Arabic and Chinese
The portal home page in 2010, with language selection including Arabic and Chinese

The story

  1. 2006
    The start

    Avarice is founded and, in the same year, the portal takes shape: students, partner companies, universities and the first internship openings.

  2. 2007
    Numbers for decision-makers

    Reporting arrives: posted and active openings, partners, student and university activity, most requested skills.

  3. 2008
    Each country its own way

    Profiles become extensible: each country adds the fields it needs, without touching the code.

  4. 2009
    Many countries, one platform

    With multi-country mode a single installation serves a whole region, such as the Asia-Pacific portal.

  5. 2010
    A more social portal

    Saved searches with email alerts, references from external contacts, openings shared on Facebook and Twitter, a welcome in the student’s language.

  6. 2011
    Beyond the portal

    Openings are enriched with results from external job search engines and automatic import from other sources.

Four worlds on one platform

StudentsProfile with technical and language skills, job search, applications and references.
Partner companiesPost openings, search for candidates, manage interviews and internships.
Universities and learning centresFollow their students and their agreements with companies.
Microsoft, country by countryRuns the local portal: content, users, rules, newsletters and reports.

Governance: shared rules, local decisions

A portal used in such different countries only works if it is clear what is the same for everyone and what each country decides. The platform kept the two apart: one product to evolve and maintain, and all the local freedom needed, without parallel versions of the code.

The same for everyone

  • One code base and a single release stream
  • The internship path: opening, application, interview, internship, evaluation
  • Sign-in with Windows Live ID and security rules
  • The same reporting indicators, to compare countries

Decided by each country

  • Languages, page content, FAQs and guides
  • Additional fields in student profiles
  • Universities, departments and agreements with companies
  • Email templates, newsletters and surveys
  • Approval workflows and owners

The path of an internship

  1. 1OpeningThe partner posts the project: skills, languages, location and type of agreement.
  2. 2ApplicationThe student applies; the portal suggests the openings that best fit the profile.
  3. 3InterviewThe company assesses candidates and arranges interviews.
  4. 4InternshipStart, dates, tutor and owners of the internship.
  5. 5EvaluationFinal feedback and surveys, to measure the programme’s results.

Around the path, the tools to manage it at scale: automatic email reminders, management of inactive users, bulk uploads of students and universities, per-country reports on SQL Server Reporting Services.

From one portal to a network of portals

One code baseInstallations for a single country or a whole region, all from the same product.
Languages as resourcesNew languages without touching the code, including right-to-left Arabic.
Independent componentsPortal, reminders, job import and external search run separately, with caching for peaks.
Open to the outsideWeb services and RSS feeds for openings, Windows Live ID sign-in, social sharing.

What it left us

  • Five years with a global client, from the first line of code to operations in dozens of countries.
  • A method to separate what is shared from what is local, which we still apply in our projects and products.
  • The habit of designing for growth: languages, countries and integrations added over time without rewriting.

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