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Microsoft Taken To Task On Hiring Practices
Turns out Microsoft is taking some heat on arrogant and slow hiring practices. I've been approached by headhunters looking for Microsoft jobs a few times, and it was nothing to write home about, I can tell you that.
Because I have so many buzz words on my resume, I get calls for all kinds of stuff. A couple times I've been approached to help work Microsoft help desks (no thanks, having enough problems keeping the Microsoft stuff I have running.)
According to the article,
"The issue has come to the fore in part because of comments made this month by internal Microsoft recruiter Gretchen Ledgard, who blasted some of her company's managers as "entitled, spoiled whiners" who assume that everyone wants to work for Microsoft."
Ugh. Not exactly the kind of press you want your recruiters generating for you, huh?
Another time I was contacted, it was to help install Oracle financials at Microsoft (on Oracle platforms, no less!) The recruiter was quite understandably concerned that I keep this hush-hush. You won't tell anyone, will you?
I've also talked with them about architecture jobs, and a friend of mine was helping them design their next version of .NET. But Microsoft is a huge company, with something like 60,000 employees. You could meet one employee a day at Microsoft and be finished meeting people about 160 years later. An organization that size is just too much to fit into the mind all at one time, if you ask me.
Microsoft also gets heat for its extensive interviewing process, which can take over 9 interviews and a couple trips to Redmond. I'm okay with tough interviews -- in fact I like them that way -- but Microsoft needs to act on these candidates right away. Assuming that everyone wants to work for Microsoft and that people are waiting around for them to make up their mind is no way to run a railroad.
Depends. I was hired as a contractor to be a developer on a Mac product. I went for 1 interview and had my offer waiting on voice mail by the time I returned to my office.
I did go to work there. I didn't care for it. I left for another job about the timer the contract was finished.
Imagine?!!! 9 set of interviews before entering the Microsoft?... survival of the fittest..Applicants would surely go to their second choice jobs if that's the system. Microsoft has been in the headlines than they could possibly want. In the news had been Microsoft's first layoffs in the companies’ history, and then a snafu with the severance cash advance packages they gave to laid off employees. Now Sen. Charles Grassley has said that Microsoft should lay off workers employed on H1-B visas first, which the company has flatly refused. The company said that they practice nothing but fairness in its hiring practices, and the same in layoffs. Accusations of racism have been flying after the request, and Microsoft maintains that it will continue to hire employees on a strictly merit base, and will not resort to discrimination in any way, shape or form.
Nine interviews sounds daunting, but it's not apparent that more interviews result in better employees. Simply because something is grueling does not mean that it chooses the fittest victor.
Its going to be interesting to see how tech companies handle the recession. Rumor has it that Google is laying off 5% or more of their workforce, and Microsoft is up to 10%, I believe. Does the argument that there aren't people out there to fill jobs still hold true if you're slashing large sections of the workforce?