I’ve super excited to tell you that I’ve accepted a position as Principal Architect at Bing Mobile and am moving to the Seattle, Washington area to work on maptastic things! Yay! Even better, Microsoft is donating access to its global orthorectified aerial imagery to help OpenStreetMappers make the map even better than it already is. OpenStreetMap, the project I founded, allows users to draw features like buildings and...
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About a month ago, I attended a management training course.  It is one of many enriching classes offered by Microsoft to help develop and grow our people.  During that three day course, I had the pleasure of meeting Jamie Wells, the Director of Global Trade Marketing for Microsoft Mobile Advertising.  As director of trade marketing, Jamie is responsible for defining Microsoft’s mobile advertising positioning, which...
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One of the great things about Microsoft is our commitment to growing our employees’ careers.  Career development is an on-going priority at Microsoft.  However, to ensure everyone has the tools and structure to grow, we also have a formal process where we focus on career development.    March is when we hold our Midyear Career Discussions.  This is a time where each of our employees takes time to think about...
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One of our blog readers asked how he can prep for his upcoming Microsoft interview.  There is a ton of information online and I have provided some of those links below, but here are some tips I give my candidates (thanks to some of my fellow recruiters who have helped articulate the tips so well): Brush up on your programming skills, including algorithms and data structures.  Yes, we may ask you about computer science principles from...
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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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Omar is a new Senior Research Software Development Engineer (RSDE) on the Bing team in our Search Technology Center in Mountain View, CA.  He’s working on super secret (my words, not Omar’s) features for Bing.  Omar recently came to us from a high profile Internet company.  I first met Omar at the SIGIR conference in 2006 and we have kept in touch ever since waiting for the right timing and the right role.  Here...
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It is that time of year again, what are you going to do better or change in 2010?    For 2009, I was going to give up ice cream – I lasted until March.  I have decided to abandon empty New Year’s Resolutions.  This year, I am getting smarter.  I am setting goals with easier execution points.  Bing is helping me with execution. I am focusing on being more informed about current events.  This is an...
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A recruiter walks into a bar…    I was sitting in a bar in Bellevue last week, waiting for my to-go order.  I started chatting with two gentlemen sitting next to me and one happened to be a new hire in my organization, hired by one of my fellow Bing recruiters.  As we were talking, he asked me what I thought was a strange question: “Are recruiters incentivized to hire people?”  He wondered if we were...
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Many people understand search overload.  We are talking about it in Bing commercials: that feeling of too many irrelevant search results.  I am hoping this community will have sympathy for my similar problem – recruiter search overload.  I read hundreds of resumes per week, looking for the best talent for Bing.  As part of my recruiting efforts, I also post jobs.  I try to be very diligent and scan all of the...
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