There are large number of self taught people in my area of the company (services). Experience in another industry is plus- we are the people who directly help c

There are large number of self taught people in my area of the company (services). Experience in another industry is plus- we are the people who directly help customers build on top of Microsoft’s products. The biggest thing we (my division) look for in industry hires is an ability to interact with customers and master new skills quickly. On the technical angle, we do want to see knowledge beyond just on area of development (full-stack to cloud, o365 integration, sys admin experience, analytics work, etc...). Direct knowledge of the MS stack helps, but we hire plenty of people who know AWS and them teach them Azure (for example). In terms of setting yourself up to get hired, I recommend trying to start a product/business. I’ve done three side companies/projects over the years, all done on nights and weekends, all of which never really did anything. I wasn’t very committed to them, they didn’t take up THAT much time, never really cost money (never had payroll, biggest expenses was a small factory order of light up dog collars at one), and I expected them to fail, but I learned a ton of new stuff to make the MVP and business systems happen.