1. Word of mouth: another manager or employee at Microsoft saw or knows a candidate, happens to remember my job opening, and passes it on to me. [This is by far the best source of leads, obviously, and generally results in a hire in one way or another]
2. HR-sourced leads: a recruiter in Microsoft's human resources group knows about my position and is actively scouring places like Monster.com or CareerBuilder.com in order to find candidates who are potentially interesting to me. [This is surprisingly inefficient, because the recruiters often don't completely understand the industry or the specifics of the type of person I'm trying to hire. I get a lot of resumes this way, but I have to kiss a lot of frogs to find a prince]
3. Direct from the web: when you push "Submit Resume", from http://www.microsoft.com/jobs, your information comes directly to us. Depending on the position, I can have every resume go straight to me, but that generally results in such a flood that I don't bother. HR gets the submissions and sends me a pile every week or two. If I'm lucky, the recruiter will have taken the time to eliminate the obvious irrelevant ones, but if not, I have to wade through everything, including submissions from high school kids or those with no experience or relevant education whatsoever. Once I got one from a retired person who was looking for something fun to do on the side and wanted to know if he could work here for no pay. [this is sadly, rarely a source of hires]
4. Submissions directly to me
from my blog. I love getting submissions from people who see one of my open listings here and send me their resume. If you have your own blog, it lets me understand you better and perhaps suggest or refer you to somebody else.

• Lots of data there and easy to search/find. I had no trouble finding lots of candidates relevant to my open positions, esp from companies I wouldnt have thought to target for a search.
• Monster gives the employer direct contact info: I was expecting to need an additional step via Monster to get phone# and email, but thats not the case. Makes it very easy to quickly screen for interest because I just pick up the phone or pound out an email and I can immediately find out if the person is a fit, or is really interested.
• Not a lot of PM resumes there. I searched under lots of alternate job titles including project manager, product manager, etc. but generally Monster seems full of people looking for dev or test positions rather than what we have for PMs. Do people looking for jobs as product or program managers not bother posting to Monster?

Incidentally, I think the most valuable part of Monster access is the direct control it gives me as hiring manager over the searches. The Monster interface is great at quickly sorting through people efficiently, in a way that I don't get from a stack of resumes. I can easily change to search on different keywords or job titles, and sometimes that even helps me learn more about the candidate. (One guy had submitted himself as interested in two different job titles, which tells me more about him than if I'd only seen the one title).

If you post to Monster.com, I suggest first of all, take the "How do you describe yourself" question seriously. It's the first line that I see and often the only part I bother to skim. Too many of the descriptions are simple things like "A Team Player" or "Excellent Problem Solver". I know you want to sell yourself, but unfortunately that description doesn't help at all. Much better to say something like "Experienced Speech Professional" or "Expert SR developer".

Second, look at the "Most Recent Job Description" section. I only see the first 2 lines in my summary, so be sure to make them count. The best summaries say something about your employer (if it's a small or relatively unknown org) and a brief description of your function. You can also say more about your career in those 2 lines, including something about all your employers if you think that's relevant.

Finally, be sure to clean up the text version of your resume. I don't have time to see the Word version, so be sure that the text form is as clear as possible (with ALL CAPS for titles, generous white space, etc.)

So if you're looking for a job in the speech industry, how do you go about it?