How to Answer: Please describe your experience leading initiatives that utilize Azure.
Advice and answer examples written specifically for a Microsoft job interview.
18. Please describe your experience leading initiatives that utilize Azure.
Why the Interviewer Asks This Question
Azure represents a significant solution space at Microsoft. Many of Microsoft's enterprise-level clients use a portion of the solutions Azure has to offer to manage their business within the cloud. Interviewers ask this question to determine if a candidate has experience leading initiatives that rely on the software as a service, platform as a service, or infrastructure as a service tool of Azure to manage important business functions.
Written by Karrie Day on May 9th, 2022
Remember To
Remember to describe the specific tool or service the teams you led implemented. Azure represents an extensive set of solutions and offering this level of detail within your response demonstrates your awareness of the scale of Azure.
Written by Karrie Day on May 9th, 2022
Answer Example
"I currently work for a retail company that sells food products online. Our architects and engineers use Azure computer services to manage our company's website, host virtual machines, handle web-based job processing, and manage secure sign-on. I have led several website upgrade projects in which the engineers regularly lean on these solutions.
The biggest Azure program I have had responsibility for was the implementation of Azure data management tools. The previous state was a series of disparate data sources that were held together manually. A reporting team developed custom reports on the fly any time an operational leader or executive needed information. The team always had a backlog of reporting requests which meant important business decisions were often made without the analytical support they truly needed. Also, the quality of the information relied on the expertise of the report developer assigned to the request. I was asked to take a look at the situation, and the analysts on my team quickly identified several inconsistencies that resulted in marketing campaign issues, inventory shortages and overages, and product launch failures.
We partnered with the Azure team to develop a data warehouse to provide reliability and consistency within our data views. The easy-to-use and powerful query tools and power BI solutions made a huge difference in the data quality over the first several months after implementation. We are currently in the process of implementing Azure Synapse Analytics to give us a more holistic view of our data and run real-time analytics any time we need information. Our business partners are very happy with the progress to date. They appreciate the ability to rely on the information they receive without having to spend so much time checking the data for quality issues before they make decisions."
Written by Karrie Day on May 9th, 2022