PriyaAgain, after a long pause, just when you started to wonder where I went, I am back with some exciting stuff to share.

If you're looking for a perfect time and opportunity to apply at Microsoft and wished you could attend one of our career fairs no matter where in the world you are located, here's some fun news.  You can meet us virtually next week!

We're participating in a worldwide virtual career fair in Second Life from May 15th through 17th.  Second Life is a very cool, wildly popular virtual world, and we'll be meeting and interviewing candidates during the job fair on "TMP Island", so named because of the career fair hosts, TMP Worldwide. 

You should come check it out!

So what is Second Life?  It’s a place where virtual world meets reality in an online 3D virtual world that has grown exponentially since it’s opening four years ago.  It has over six million registered users and is one of the fastest growing online communities, with an average of over 25,000 users online (referred to as avatars) and in the virtual world at any given time.

If you don’t have a Second Life account, you can sign up here.  During this virtual career fair you'll be able to chat/IM with recruiters in private, so you can ask all of the burning questions you've been thinking about, you can share your thoughts, feedback and ideas with us and meet with other candidates from around the world. 

And though this is a virtual world, you could potentially interview with us for a REAL job...pretty cool. 

So here's the opportunity - attending the career fair is absolutely free, and all you need is a computer with Internet.  Pretty simple.  Come check it out!  And tell us what you think.

Do you like having this kind of tech savvy user experience while job hunting?  Do you think it's nice to avoid travel and skip business cards, printed resumes, interview suits, etc?

A few last words of wisdom: The first step in the process is to sign up and create a Second Life account.  Once you've submitted your resume, a Microsoft recruiter will take a look and if you seem to be qualified for one of our jobs, will send you an invitation to join us on the Island at the career fair. 

Interested?  Move quickly since the deadline to submit resumes is Monday, May 14th!

If you try it out, definitely fill us in about your experience and share your thoughts with the other readers.  Or just tell us what you think about this opportunity - good, bad, other?  And who knows...the one with best story might even win a prize from me!

Cheers, and Happy Job Hunting!

- Priya

PS: Who's going to take Jenna to dinner?  I'd request dinner at the top of the Space Needle, if I were you...