By Elizabeth Hoogs 

Bill Gates on The Daily Show?  Did anyone else see it last night? 

To discuss today’s release of Vista, Gates joined host Jon Stewart in some playful banter about the operating system, its security, usability, and the F12 button.  They went on to talk about the future of computing and how much further we still have to go to realize the dream that Bill Gates and Paul Allen had over thirty years ago. 

Bill gave a few simple examples of what can be done with television and with the interface between computers and humans, but noted that these uses are just scratching the surface.  It’s exciting to know that even as we at Microsoft celebrated the launch yesterday (Jim Allchin sent out a mail to all Microsoft employees yesterday which started with “Let’s Party!”), there are countless ways we can continue to innovate and impact globally, beyond what has already been done.

Let me know what you think!  Check out the segment and post your comments! 

- Liz

By Elizabeth Hoogs

In the last three weeks, I have been to as many schools and as many career fairs.  I just finished the Fall Career Fair at University of Wisconsin Madison, and after shaking hands and collecting resumes, I have a stack of candidates who stood out to me and my colleagues as passionate, smart, and will be invited for first round interviews.  So what did they do right?

Career Fairs are brutal.  You poor students wonder among the booths, weave your way through the crowds, resumes in hand, trying to catch the eye of a recruiter.  Your job is to communicate your interests and impress me in a very short period of time.  Here are a few tips on being noticed (in a good way;-)).

1. Come Prepared with a resume:
Please come with a resume, preferably 1 page, 1 side.  If you are going to have a 2+ page resume, please staple the two pages.  I will often get back to the office with a single, nameless second page.  Please make sure the contact information and grad date are up to date on your resume. 

2. Do quick research on the companies you plan to visit:
Most Career Service Centers will post which companies will be attending the fairs.  By spending a few minutes on each of your targeted companies, you will learn about the opportunities they offer.  This helps you highlight your skills relevant to those positions while speaking to the recruiter and you stand out as a driven candidate.  Knowing what you want is really important to us; it’s often not just about what you can do, but what you want to do. 

3. Tell me about yourself, not your resume:
We love the opportunity to speak with students and get beyond the resume.  Try to emphasize what you’re passionate about doing and back it up with examples of what you’ve done, but do not read from your resume.  Take the opportunity to tell the recruiter about your passions, interests, and how they can be realized at their company and trust that they will look at your resume in depth later. 

Of course, skill level, which positions are open or not, and your talent are the primary determining factors, but these might help you showcase your potential match for a given company.  I hope these can help you increase your success and that you hear from many companies!

Liz

By Elizabeth Hoogs

We talk about “college candidates” a lot on JobsBlog, but who does and doesn’t this term refer to?  While at first glance this seems somewhat easy (they’re in college, Liz), I want to talk not just about what makes a “college” candidate as opposed to an “Industry” candidate, but what makes a college student a successful candidate which hopefully trends toward success in the first few years in their career. 

We define a college candidate as someone currently pursuing a degree (as a full time student) or has graduated within the last 12 months.  We actively recruit candidates pursuing a Bachelors, Masters (including MBA), or PhD.  Students who have been out of school for more than 12 months are considered an Industry candidate and should apply to the jobs found on the external careers website.  There are cases that are not as clear cut, where a student might return to school after working in the industry or someone who is working full time while pursuing a degree.  Situations can vary from person to person so it's not easy to say whether a college recruiter or industry recruiter would be the best person to work with you.  If you are in one of these "fuzzy" situations, I'd recommend applying through both our college and experienced websites.  If we have a match, the right recruiter will contact you, and don't worry - we'll still match you with the most appropriate role for your years and level of experience.

For our software development positions (PM, SDE, & SDET), we recruit from the usual suspects: Computer Science, Computer Engineering, and Software Engineering.  We also look for opportunities to fill core technical positions from outside the traditional disciplines, including Electrical Engineering, Physics, and Math.  If a candidate is passionate about creating software and has the foundation of applicable skills, we are dedicated to teaching them the rest. 

We expect a successful college candidate coming out of one of the core disciplines to be passionate about building software, to be smart, and to have strong technical skills relative to their experience.  We also have a set of what we call “Microsoft Values” for which we hold a high bar.  To be a successful college candidate, you need to have a balanced blend of technical skills and core competencies.  We need to determine, based on class work, and outside internships and experiences, that a candidate has the capacity to learn, grow, and excel.  You are, very much, our future. 

It sounds cliché by this time, but Microsoft highly values one’s potential.  The company was started by two gutsy college students and since then has maintained a commitment to bringing in new graduates as fresh voices to drive our products.  With robust training and mentorship programs, we offer the opportunity for someone to come in and gain experience while building the next generation of software. 

Please let me know if you would like to hear more on any of these topics and I will post in more depth.  As bloggers, we are here to give you the content we hope will be helpful, so let us know!

-Liz

By Elizabeth Hoogs

In the College Recruiting Group, we do things a bit differently than most Industry Recruiting teams.  Rather than having a single person work with a candidate from start to finish, A-Z, soup to nuts, we each own a certain function within the recruiting cycle and focus on that.  We find our structure to be effective, but it can be confusing to our candidates at times.  I thought it might help to give a brief description of the different contacts a candidate might have during their college recruiting experience.

Here is the breakdown:

School Recruiter
This is the first recruiter you’re likely to meet.  This person works directly with your school to maintain career center relationships, attend and host events (including Career Fairs), and perform and facilitate on-campus first round interviews.  This is the person who collects the resumes, who you might see around campus, and who helps determine which position(s) might be a best match for a given candidates.  If you are wondering who your school recruiter is and want to send them your resume, you can find them listed here. 

Recruiting Coordinator
If you are chosen for second round interviews (after your on-campus interviews), you will be informed by your school recruiter and then contacted by a Recruiting Coordinator.  This person will help you get to Microsoft for your interviews with the least hassle possible.  An RC will help you decided which dates are best for you given your class, project and exam schedule, will book your flights, hotel, and rental car, if desired.  This person also schedules the interviewers on your interview day and will help answer any questions regarding reimbursement of expenses.  At this point, if you have any logistical questions, the RC is the best place to go.  If you have questions or concerns outside of logistics, your School Recruiter is still available to you.

Filler Recruiter
The filler recruiter will be your first friendly face the morning of your interview day.  When you come to building 19 (if you are interviewing in Redmond) the morning of your on-site interviews, you will meet with your designated Filler Recruiter.  The Filler Recruiter partners with the client teams, ensuring their hiring needs are met with the best talent.  They will meet with candidates and perform a recruiter evaluation, will explain the logistics of your day, and will help you with any problems if they come up during the day.  This person is also the one to follow up with you with the results of your interviews and work with you if an offer is made.  At this point, your School Recruiter is still out on campus, performing first round interviews, and evaluating resumes, but they are still there if you need them for anything or have any questions!

Other people you might meet
Because there are so many great candidates and because we work so hard to have the best recruiting in the industry, we use lots of resources to help us do our job.  These people include alumni from your school who are now employed at Microsoft, people who work in client teams who have been trained to perform interviews (both on-campus and on-site), recruiters and client team partners might perform first-round phone interviews or Net Meeting interviews, hiring teams, shuttle drivers, etc. 

Although it may seem like a candidate gets passed from person to person, we are all in touch.  If there is ever concern, just ping someone you’ve been in contact with and we’ll get it all straightened out . :)  Hope this helps!

By Elizabeth Hoogs

Often I get emails from students entering their computer engineering or computer science departments asking for advice.  What do we look for in a student?  Which classes should they take to set themselves up to be a successful applicant for an internship or full time opportunities out of college? 

The easy answer:  Take the hardest classes and lots of project classes, and do well in them. 

When we interview students on campus, we know that your experience lies primarily in the classes you have taken and in the projects you’ve worked on.  These are the things we will focus on and, in doing so, try to determine if how you performed and what you learned in those experiences will translate into a high performing member of Microsoft. 

Having project classes where you worked in teams is very important because everyone at Microsoft relies on everyone else to do their part.  No man is an Island here; no software stands alone, and project classes will give you the experience of working in a team and will allow you to talk about these experiences when in interviews. 

Taking hard classes sounds too simple, and it kind of is.  We want to see that you are self-driven, a hard worker, and really passionate about software, engineering, and problem solving.  Students who are naturally driven do take the harder classes -  not because they are hard, but because they are excited about the content the classes teach and because they are driven and know they will do everything they can to succeed in the class.  Once you get to the upper level classes, you are able to customize your coursework to your interests and luckily, we have products and groups in most, if not all, of those areas. 

The not-so-easy answer:  It’s up to you.

We talk a lot at Microsoft about the whole package.  We don’t want to hire an amazing coder who doesn’t work hard; likewise, our successful candidates do have strong technical skills.  A successful candidate has a healthy blend of technical know-how and potential, mixed with strong core competencies.  I feel like these candidates self-select to some degree.  As passion feeds your drive, your drive feeds how hard you work, and this feeds your technical knowledge, and this feeds your passion ...  We can’t give you advice regarding your passion, it just is, but I can tell you that the successful students love software and technology so much, that they are naturally driven to success.  The rest just falls in place.

Liz