Microsoft Update: Seattle Bound

After my last post about my first round Microsoft screening interview, I was suprised to see that JobsBlog, Microsoft’s recruiting blog, had picked up my recap and linked to it. Good tihng I spellchecekd! Microsoft did get back to me somewhat soon after my interview, and let me know that they wanted to fly me to Seattle and interview me more. I’ve been working with them on securing the details, and a day or two ago I got my plane tickets booked.

Interview, December 6th

Next Tuesday, I’ll be interviewing with the various Microsoft employees. From what I have heard, between interviews you will often have a ten or fifteen minute gap of time. In between your sessions of interviews, the interviewers are emailing about you and talking about what they think of you. I have thought about doing my own version of this and liveblogging it via the BlackBerry that day (not in the interviews, of course, that would be over-the-top). At this point, I would say it is just a fleeting thought and it’s not very likely that I will do that - but it’s still a possibility.

On the Microsoft Hiring Process in General:

On JobsBlog, Gretchen (one of the most prolific bloggers in the MS recruiting department) asked me how I would change the hiring process to not miss out on qualified people. (This was in response to my comment that MS has a hiring process biased to reject good people at the expense of hiring bad ones) At this point, I don’t know if I would change much about the process.

With very few exceptions, it is better to not hire someone who is good than it is to hire someone who is bad. The cost of hiring a bad employee can be huge. Costs include lost productivity of other team members, opportunity cost of what a more productive employee would have contributed, and the general loss of morale the team feels when an idiot is running free. The cost of not hiring someone who may be qualified is practically nothing. In a competitive environment, a competitor may have a better screening process that will identify the person and hire them - but only in rare cases will this have a negative impact on your company. The best part about not hiring someone who is borderline is that person may end up working for your competitor and decreasing their productivity.

What first sparked my interest in Microsoft was when I heard about how selective they were in hiring. A selective employer is a good environment to work in because it assures that you will be working with competant people. The type of person that responds to the challenge of being hired at Microsoft may be exactly the type of person that they want to hire. Someone that enjoys challenges. Now - on the flip side - you don’t want a bunch of people who define their self worth by what other people think of them. Fortunately, a screening interview can eliminate most of those people.

This opinion is based only on my limited experience and on what I have read. Once I experience the interview process for myself, these thoughts may change and I might be able to share more information about how to change the process.