Microsoft Corp. is one of the most well-known companies in the world. There are tales of wild perks, and top-notch salaries, along with the unique experience of working on software that has an almost-monopoly in the world and is both beloved and reviled.
ComputerWorld Canada was in Redmond, Wash. 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.
Who gets in Warren Ashton, a Microsoft recruiting group manager, said that candidates come from two streams: college kids and industry hires. Ashton said that the majority of their hires come from the university stream, where it looks for good students who are engaged with Microsoft technologies already, and are into new challenges. They also have the demand for soft skills that seem to be en vogue in the tech industry. Said Ashton: “We want people with team-building skills, and team leadership experience, as there’s a good chance they’ll collaborate with lots of different kinds of people, so they need to be dynamic and handle multiple types of personalities and ambiguity: projects don’t always go the way you want them to go.”
Hands-on experience is also highly valued; one of the best ways to get an in to the corporation is to snag one of the 1,100 internships that Microsoft doles out every year.
The University of Waterloo is one of the handful of “top-tier” schools where Microsoft has a significant presence on-campus and recruits heavily on a constant basis.
Tamer Özsu, director of the University of Waterloo’s computer science school, attributes the success of the school’s graduates to several things: vigorous coursework, professors’ high expectations, the high GPA required, hands-on project-based courses and more in-depth assignments.
One of the many University of Waterloo grads culled by Microsoft includes Toronto native Alan Liu, who graduated last year and now works as a software design engineer on the Silverlight plug-in for their Internet browser. He benefited from the computer engineering program’s required six co-op work-terms — one of which was with Microsoft. He credits this with getting him in the door, but also with giving him valuable soft skills, as he was able to work with a lot of customers.
Industry candidates are sourced from resumé sites, social networking sites, job sites and networking. Recruiters will even contact people they know aren’t looking for a job to suss out if they have any interest in working for Microsoft, anyway.
When hiring from this arena, Ashton said, Microsoft looks for those who have kept up on the latest technologies and honed their skills since the end of their formal education. These candidates are usually sourced to fit a required skillset. “It’s more skills matchmaking than (when you hire a new university graduate) and let them blossom within the corporation,” said Ashton. But even if a candidate is hired to do a specific job, they can eventually move onto something else if it might be a better fit.
Ashton said, “If someone has an interest, a passion, and the unique skills to move into another area, they can do it.” At the end of Liu’s internship with Microsoft and when he had graduated, there wasn’t a job open on the same team with which he had previously worked. Instead, he said the company was flexible in allowing him to poke about for a new fit.