Dare gives an interesting comparison of recent MSFT recruiting efforts and comments. The debate continues about foreign (H1B) candidates versus American candidates.

 

In particular, Shelley, from burningbird.net, states the following in this post:

 

"'the implication that corporations such as Microsoft are just begging for people, when most of us know (and as I discussed earlier), this isnt true"

 

I did a quick search at microsoft.com/jobs and received 3,650 results. Now granted, this is ALL job openings in the U.S. (not limited to IT listings), but let's face it that's more than 5% of our total # of positions in the company.  A similar search at Intel resulted in 1,436 jobs. 243 at HP. 451 at Apple. 467 at Sun Microsystems. 122 at Novell.

 

I admit that these numbers are for all job openings (software, hardware, legal, hr, sales, etc.), but I think they demonstrate my point which is that Microsoft is looking for people and has even more opportunity than similar companies. I have been involved in a few jobs openings here and trust me, the hiring managers normally want to fill the positions ASAP. Typically, if they don't fill the position within a certain period of time they stand the risk of losing the headcount completely.

 

If you want to work for Microsoft then I strongly encourage you to apply at microsoft.com/jobs. Also check out Heather and Gretchen's blogs.

 

update (7.23):  Gretchen chimes in on the issue too.  I'm telling you right now...the group I work with wants to hire good, experienced people.  In the past few months we've hired 5+ new people (to replace ones who moved on) and they were a healthy mix of internal and external candidates of various ages (30-something to 40-something).

 

~tod