What is up with candidates not self-identifying when applying for jobs? Do you think employers will not find out when they interview you? 😉 At some point they will find out before you are hired. As someone who is black, if I am applying to a company who is not seeking blacks (and, yes, they are out there) then I might as well save us both time by including this information on my application. Instead of “applying blind” why not target...
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Here are some reminders about links on your resume to the web and links on the web that lead to your resume. Careful What You Put Online. If you have a online account, people you won’t want to be reading your profile may be able to access it, even if you think nobody will reads it. Make your accounts private, so only your friends can access them. Be extra careful, and don’t post anything that you don’t want a...
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For those of you who may have missed it, Bing has continued to make steady increases to our US search share numbers. The full article is here.  December numbers we up to 10.7 overall share. This caps a remarkable six months since the launch of Bing, (we were somewhere below 7 percent share when we launched in June).   The most troubling trend here is that our share is increasing at the expense of Yahoo, rather than the other guys, but...
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I was invited to add a guest blog post this week because of an all too common situation I was just in. I had time scheduled with a candidate to discuss his background and to see if one of the open roles I recruit for might be a good fit. (Shameless plug – Product Managers, Product Planners & MarketersJ) I was looking forward to the conversation until the night before when, to my horror, he sent me his… Executive Bio. Before even...
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I watched President Obama’s State of the Union address last night.  Regardless of your political affiliations, I think it is always interesting.  A couple of things that struck me tonight were his remarks about innovation and diversity.    He spoke about the need for greater innovation and a larger emphasis on science.  While he talked about in terms of America being a leader, I instead think about the fact that...
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Some of the benefits of a big company like Microsoft is our stable foundation and our vast resources.  But did you know we can leverage those benefits and still feel like a start-up?  I have said it before and our employees have confirmed it, Microsoft Search has the passion and excitement of a start-up.  We are highly innovative and willing to take risks.  An article that just appeared in the San Jose Mercury gives a...
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Some job seekers don’t fully understand a recruiter’s role. They view recruiters as getting in the middle of their job search, preventing direct contact with the hiring manage(s) for available positions. Well this is actually true and these job seekers are going to have a long and frustrating search for their next job, because the vast majority of companies now use recruiters almost exclusively to facilitate the hiring process...
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I just got out of a meeting with a Hiring Manager and I really feel energized.  The hiring manager, we’ll call him “B” just joined Bing about one month ago from another group within Microsoft. Having made the move into the online/web services world, the exposure he has to planning and design is awesome and the energy he gets from the discussions on making the huge scale that Bing deals with ‘work’ is mind...
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There was a great bit in the original Clerks film where Dante and Randal discuss if one’s stated function always ties to what they actually do… (As pointed out by Kenji!). Anyone who’s been around the technology industry knows that the meaning of a job title differs greatly from company to company. There’s a famous blog dissecting the difference between the PM role at Microsoft vs. anywhere else, so no need to revisit that...
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The newly announced winner of the Oxford American Dictionary word of 2009 is “unfriend.”   I’ve been thinking about how many of us like to think that we’re highly organized and efficient. When it comes to our social networks there is a lot we can do to make our lives easier, faster, more organized, and more efficient.   I’ve adopted some radical measures to streamline and improve my...
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