Office 2010 Home And Business Key blog a-recruiter

By Priya Priyadarshini My last blog where I introduced all of you to Mona was so well received…THANK YOU for your continued support and keep reading. Hopefully we will be able to incorporate more of such interviews and also provide a platform for you to meet and get to know more wonderful people who are a part of Microsoft. Today I want to introduce you to a good friend, a great developer, an even better interviewer, and a passionate photographer - Paul David. Paul was one of the five interviewers who accompanied me on the recent Egypt recruiting trip. Paul has been at Microsoft for over 12 years and has worked on several multi-media and graphics-related products including Internet Explorer and Windows Vista. He currently manages a development team working on the Windows Presentation Foundation. Paul lives near Seattle with his wife and two lovely daughters, and together they enjoy reading books and running the local trails. This is Paul’s story from Egypt,Office 2010 Home And Business Key, in his own words and images (and all of these incredible images are courtesy of Paul, except for the group shots): One of the things I like about Microsoft is that we will go anywhere in the world to find the best candidates. At times, my development team has been composed of more foreign-born engineers than Americans. I’ve seen first-hand that diversity makes teams stronger. I have visited universities all over the U.S., and had done a couple of international trips. But I’d never been to Egypt, and didn’t know so much about the culture or the talent pool there. What an experience though! Ten hours of interviewing each day, riding a camel, several near-death experiences in the Cairo taxicabs, and the opportunity to experience a rich and fascinating culture would have been enough. On top of all that, we made some great hires,Office 2007 Standard Key! Watching one of our recruiters swap camels (without dismounting!) the day we visited the Pyramids was icing on the cake. On these trips we do a full loop, much as we would here on the Microsoft campus, and make a hire/no-hire decision about each interviewee. It’s intense work, but pretty efficient for identifying the top talent. Over the course of three to five interviews,Office 2010 Pro Plus, we can look at several facets of each candidate,Windows 7 Enterprise, ensuring that each gets a fair chance. This also gives the candidate a good picture of who we are, and how it is to work at Microsoft. While in Egypt, we got to do a presentation at the American University in Cairo. Anne and Priya did a great overview of how candidates can prepare and what we look for in our new hires. Then we technical interviewers got to talk a little bit about what we do and the different products we’ve worked on. This was a lot of fun for me – the discussion was free-form, and there were some great questions for us. Later in the week, I interviewed several people who attended the talk, and this gave us a chance to have a more detailed discussion about what it’s like to work on products used by people all over the world. The overall quality of candidates we got to meet with in Egypt was very good. All were well-prepared and very professional. Many candidates want to know what to expect during the interview and how best to prepare for it. The primary thing is to be very comfortable with problem solving, algorithmic design, data structures, and the art of coding. You’ll also want to be able to talk about the key technical issues and trade-offs from your past projects. I look for people who are smart, creative, and love to build software. These attributes have much more long-term value than knowledge of specific technologies, programming languages and methodologies. A good book for interviewees (and interviewers!) to check out is Programming Interviews Exposed by Mongan and Suojanen. William Poundstone’s book,Office Professional Plus 2007, How Would You Move Mount Fuji? is interesting, although I see Microsoft moving away from the “puzzle interview” culture described in the book. Reading about Microsoft interviews and interview questions on the web may give you a sense of what some interview experiences are like, but be aware that the information is pretty anecdotal and isn’t always very accurate or valuable. You’re far better off being yourself than trying to memorize answers to specific questions. You can find lots of useful information on the Microsoft Careers site, including interview preparation tips and background on the different roles at Microsoft.