A short while ago I received an email from a student at Lancaster University asking for information about careers for students at Microsoft. It occurred to me that there is no one place where all the opportunities for UK students are listed. Well now there is...

• MSP Program - The Microsoft Student Partner program is an excellent way for students to learn about new technologies, talk about them to their peers and get some great technology experience on their CV.
• The Imagine Cup - The imagine cup is a group of international competitions for students held by Microsoft the most famous of which is the Software Development Competition. Its a great way to showcase your talents and win some cool stuff along the way and once again it looks great on your CV.
• US Summer Placements - Microsoft US offers summer placements to international computer science students at our head office in Redmond. This is a great opportunity to get visibility within Microsoft as well as getting hands on experience working in a large team of developers. Guess what...it looks great on your CV!
• UK Internships - Microsoft UK offers internships to students from both business and technical backgrounds. Interns get the opportunity to take on a real role for a year and if successful the chance of returning as a full time employee once graduated.
• UK Graduate Scheme - Microsoft UK also offers a graduate scheme with three tracks; Technical, Sales and Marketing. Each track offers grads the opportunity to take on a permanent full time role within the company with tons of training and support. What better way to launch an IT career?

Admittedly the timing of this post is not that great since all of the above programs have now closed entry for this year but bookmark this page and take another look in 6 months time and most should be open for 2008.