Hire America's Heroes Success Stories
Examples of how Hire America's Heroes' sponsor companies have welcomed transitioning service members to the corporate workforce.
Microsoft Supports The Military
Manager for the Customer Experience Measurement Group at MicrosoftFormer Army Apache pilot excels as a corporate manager with America’s leading software solutions provider.
by Warren Duffie for gijobs.com
Shannon Huffman Polson is used to facing daunting challenges. After working as a successful program manager during her initial assignment at Microsoft, she was placed in command of a struggling customer service team facing outdated processes and lack of process consistency across businesses. This made costs much higher than they should have been, as well as introducing a number of risks to the team mission.
But the former Army captain wasn’t intimidated. She had blazed new trails during her military career – the first female Apache helicopter pilot for one battalion, the first women to command an Apache line company for another battalion, a platoon leader in dangerous reconnaissance missions over Bosnia, and the first woman to command an Apache line company for the 2nd Infantry Division.
Microsoft Hires The Military
Systems Engineer at Microsoft CorporationArmy Ranger maintains integral systems for Microsoft.
by Warren Duffie for gijobs.com
Josh Wilson understands the power of information. As a systems engineer at the Redmond, Wash., headquarters of Microsoft Corp., he provides “back-end” support for MSN.com, Messenger.com, and Live.com — three of the company’s key information Web sites.
What is back-end support? Essentially, Wilson and other engineers in Microsoft’s Global Foundations Services division oversee thousands of Windows 2003 servers, information servers, and massive databases. The Army reservist’s duties range from updating online shopping portals to repairing broken servers. In addition, much of his time is spent figuring how to automate and streamline project requests and predict when company servers will need to be expanded to accommodate more information
“I like to compare it to building a soldier from scratch,” says Wilson, 28. “You have to factor in health, endurance, strength, etc. The same applies to a server. Is it working well? Has it maxed out the amount of content it can hold? Does it need to be upgraded?