My Rollercoaster Ride to join Microsoft. Part II-B. Spring 2004 – Winter 2004
Main takeaway After Phase III (for anyone who has been following the story) was to apply in/after Spring 2004 when my “MBA-Student-Recruit” status as according to Microsoft’s database will be refreshed and I will be an industry-recruit again. So herez what happened from Spring2004 (since I did have a fun, challenging time at Unisys as a Manager in Strategic Marketing during that time.)
My Rollercoaster Ride to join Microsoft. Part II-B. Spring 2004 – Winter 2004:
a.k.a The Chaos Theory.
I wrote back to SC (remember from Part 1 - Phase I), everyone I met in Phase II (RH included) and BW (from Phase III) about what I had done in the 6 months at Unisys and how I was still interested to talk to Microsoft about any opportunities. To SC in particular I made a list of things that he had suggested I could work on and told him how I had with lists of quantified results I have driven for my team.
As an aside I started spreading my alumni network at Microsoft for information and wrote them all emails to help me with ideas/opportunities In fact I even sent in a paper application with gold-gilded ivory stationary (anything to set myself apart, I guess)
Results: SC forwards my resume to SK a HR recruiter who responds instantaneously that she will keep me in mind if opportunities come along. RH responded immediately and said he had moved on to other roles at Microsoft but he was mailing my resume to his HR contacts. The alumni network from CMU at Microsoft ofcourse never responded – so much for alumni networks. But my stay at Philadelphia (and proximity to the Wharton campus helped me) and I began to talk to some Wharton alumni at MS through my friends at Wharton.
By late Summer 2004 – all these attempts went nowhere and I was back to square one with not even one single warm lead.
In frustration I adopted some internet spider search algo and started looking around for some/any feeds that spoke about Recruiting at Microsoft for Marketing/strategy professionals.
Fall 2004 – the spidersearch works and I chance on a website that reads “Heather Hamilton’s “Marketing and Finance at Microsoft” Blog”. While Heather featured the workings of Marketing, The Moongals – Gretchen and Zoe went the whole nine yards on what would happen when you were invited to Redmond for interviews. Hallelujah!!!!
A few weeks of lingering, and a months worth of asking questions and posting on her site about anything and everything later – she gets me an interview with JS (HR recruiter).
Phase 4 Winter 2004: Organized Chaos.
This was the shortest phase ever.
My interview with JS lasted 45 mins and she said she was impressed and she could immediately find 4 open positions with 3 hiring managers who would be interested in me Several firsts here:
a) this was the first time that I had a HR person directly talking to me
b) first time that they were talking to be about an actual open position
c) the first time that I knew the names of real hiring managers who had names (till now it was a black box in Phases 1-3)
The groups were supposed to be .Net, MSOffice Sharepoint and Windows Core. After scheduling and rescheduling phone-interviews with directors in these positions – I never even got to talk to any of them.
Reason: They had hired internal candidates. (Now that I am in Microsoft, I find these hiring managers use internal distribution lists to source out their candidates) – Bummer!!
Not only JS not give me any further follow-up but with the holidays coming up – that communication line just froze as did the roads in Philadelphia in 2004.
That was a cold winter.
- End of Phase 4 -
