How to get a job at Microsoft, Part 2

ComputerWorld Canada was in Redmond, Washington recently at the headquarters of the software giant, where many Canadians work. We went right to the source to find out how best to bust onto the Redmond campus, the changing hiring landscape, and what it’s like once you get there.

The interview

Interviews are almost entirely conducted face-to-face, which, if you’re applying at the main campus, means flying down to Seattle and making the trek out to Redmond, a suburb of the Emerald City. Microsoft usually books a day or two of interviewing, and makes all the flight and hotel accommodations.

Candidates should be prepared for a barrage of interviews with different people, with an average of six interviews per person. They typically range between five and eight, but could be in upwards of a dozen interviews.

The visa conundrum

In recent years, the United States has been cracking down on foreign workers and immigration laws, making it far less easy to import IT professionals down to Redmond than it once was. Even though Microsoft gets the third-highest number of H1-B visas, according to a Globe and Mail story, it still only numbers in the hundreds, said Ashton. Liu, for instance, does not have an H1-B visa, but a nonimmigrant NAFTA Professional visa, or TN visa. It has to be renewed every year, while the H1-B is renewed only once every three years.

Microsoft strives to get the “right talent for the right location,” but this is not always possible, Ashton said. “We need to go where the talent is,” he said. This strategy has resulted in the building of Microsoft development centres around the world, including a brand-new one in Vancouver.

Özsu, however, doesn’t see the visa hassles as stemming the tide of those who want to flow southward, and doesn’t think that those who really want to work at the Redmond HQ will settle for the Vancouver campus. “I think the Redmond campus has its appeal in that it’s a central site where lots of the research and development is done,” he said.

International software force

Such an international group of workers — both gathered at the Redmond HQ and spread out in development centres worldwide — has some useful side benefits.

“It’s a very big advantage. You can tap into their unique cultural needs, and get that first-level input,” Liu said. This came in handy recently when the team was doing some text rendering that required an expert eye to the Asian characters, and the vertical, right-to-left set-up and the team was able to consult with their Chinese counterparts.

“It’s useful for product cases, from restaurant menus to sumo wrestling. It really brings a global perspective,” said Craig Eisler, the general manager of the Macintosh business unit who was originally from Thunder Bay, Ontario.

The big picture

Regardless of your nationality, Eisler feels that the worker experience has improved over the years. Eisler joined Microsoft in the early nineties, working on Windows 95, which was followed by stints with Direct-X gaming, Internet Explorer Multimedia, and Windows Media Player before he left for several years to run his own start-up.

He re-joined this year, in his current position as general manager of the Macintosh business unit (he came in, ironically, in the same way a university hire would, where he worked with the company to find the best fit for his skills and experience, a set-up, he said, is very rare when it comes to industry hires).

“Microsoft has also matured a lot — it feels like a grown-up company now,” said Eisler. “Things weren’t as excellent before; it was always “get things done!” time, but now they make long-term bets and stick with them.”