I’ve been hearing a lot of grumbling lately about how Microsoft only wants to hire college students.  Earlier this week, a Seattle Times article about Bill Gates on hiring said "numerous software developers are available, having lost jobs after the dot-com bubble burst. Microsoft could fill its ranks from that pool, but the company prefers to hire new college graduates."

And then I see comments like this recent one on Dare’s blog that claims "[Microsoft] stops interviewing people at age 24."  (A reader said that, not Dare - just be clear.) :)

And of course, I am the first to admit speeches like this don’t help promote the message that we seek out and hire all kinds of talent ... not just college students.

Yes, we do a lot of hiring from college campus.  We have a world-class college recruiting team and support from several executives who are huge advocates of developing new graduate talent.  You hear about college recruiting often because we are out on the front lines.  We’re away from the Redmond campus and live and in-person on college campuses.  We're inviting interns to BillG’s house.  And we’re great about publicizing that work.

But we also do tons of hiring on the experienced applicant front.  In fact, that’s where I work exclusively, and every job you see listed on our careers site is reserved for experienced talent.  In fact, right now we have over 3500 experienced-only jobs open in the US.  That sounds to me like we are trying to "fill our ranks" with the out-of-college pool.

So I guess my message here is, yes, you hear a lot about Microsoft college hiring this and Microsoft college hiring that.  College hiring is important for the company.  That's a fact.  But we are trying really hard to get the word out in the experienced space, too.  And we need to do better about promoting that message.  I hear ya loud and clear.  Heck, that’s why I exist!

Any ideas for how to better promote that message?  Maybe we should sky-write ... "Experienced developers.  We love you, too!" :)

Because we certainly do. :)

gretchen