Keyword: résumé

In the world of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) to me, one of the most frequent is “how do I get a job at Microsoft?”.  If I had a dime for every time I’ve been asked it, at parties, on the street, and especially when I post comments on the internet, I’d have…  probably a couple of hundred dollars.

Microsoft is not that much different than most large companies with respect to getting in the door.  The keys remain the same: apply for a specific job not just “any job”, work to make yourself stand out (in professional ways), and, if possible, leverage any kind of personal connection you can make.

The things that make MS different are things that only make these more important — they have thousands of hiring managers, many thousands of open positions, and tens of thousands of applicants.

At Microsoft, the crush of tens of thousands of applicants a month meant that we resorted to “data management” to get the pile under control.  If you simply add your name to this pile, your odds of getting lost increase exponentially.  So, just like at other companies, the need to become an individual, not just a résumé, is paramount.

So what does that mean?  Sure, you can submit your résumé through the web.  In fact, you should do that.  But don’t expect this “shot in the dark” to work.  Your résumé will be scanned into a huge database, searched for keywords, and maybe, just maybe, will get pulled up by the recruiter trying to fill the job for a hiring manager as a potential candidate.  But the odds are, literally, 10,000 to 1 of that happening.

It means you need a great résumé, and I’m sure you’ve worked on yours.  I’m working on a post that will help with that.  I’ll update this link when I get it completed.  A great résumé helps you get it out of the pile and onto the short list.

It also means you really should decide exactly what you want to do, or at most a couple of jobs that are what you want to do.  Search the career site, and narrow your application to just a couple.  Huge “anything you’ll take me for” kinds of applications are just ignored.  You clearly don’t have any meaningful goals, you just want in.  That’s not interesting.  So research heavily what the jobs are, and what you want to do.

Be realistic, don’t apply for a higher position than one for which you can be an obvious candidate.  You want to be a clear consideration, not a stretch and not “overqualified”.  So apply perhaps just a tad low.  There are a million jobs at the company, people move around all the time, so just get started in a job you can be great at, then move on to your dream job from there.

But, the best way in is with some recommendation, or at least some contact with someone in the company.  Résumés that come in from someone in the company (even if just with a note that says “I don’t really know this person, but…”) come in the system through a different pipe and have a better chance of spending 10 seconds on the desk of someone who can move it on to a short list.  Coming in through the normal channels just gets it into the massive pile with everyone else.

This means you should leverage any contacts you have.  And before you ask, I’m sorry to tell you that I don’t have any direct contacts any more.  At one point I was a super contact.  As VP of HR, I could virtually guarantee that someone who cared would look at your résumé.  But that time has long passed.

So, if you know anyone (and I mean anyone) who works at the company, buy them a drink, ask them about working there, and ask them if you can send them your résumé for them to forward on to their HR person, and maybe a manager they might know who would be hiring.  Most people will do it, and most people provide just enough added emphasis to get your résumé read.

I can guess that your best friend doesn’t work there, or you wouldn’t be asking me for help.  But, I’m sure you know people indirectly.  You’ve met people at parties, or someone lives down the hall in your apartment complex, or you have a friend who knows someone.

Life is a network, leverage it.  Get an introduction, strike up a conversation, and enlist their help.  If you are kind, earnest, and sincere, it’s almost impossible to people to resist helping you.

If you really don’t know anyone, fix that.  Find out where people go have lunch or go after work, and find a way to introduce yourself.  Look for the telltale employee badge and find some way to strike up a conversation.

“What’s it like to work there?” “How long have you been there, do you like it?” “Wow, it’s always been my dream to work there, how do I get in?”  Just listen, and be interested.  Everyone is human and likes to be listened to, and even though you may strike out, eventually someone will be a friend and will help you get past the door.

Don’t paper the place with your résumé.  Don’t send in hundreds, don’t ask everyone you’ve ever met to send in one, and don’t play games (like “cute” or “trick” résumés).  They will notice.  And will immediately put you on the (informal) black list.  It’s not a game, don’t treat it like one.

Once you do get a call from a recruiter, make sure you hit the ball out of the park.  You are likely to only get only one shot at it.  The recruiter is doing a phone screen and will get a feel for who you are from that phone call.

While they are probably calling about one specific job, they have more power than that.  If you are interesting, and someone worth following up on, they will consider you for other openings they are working on, or even pass your resume on to a colleague.  In any case, really work on making that phone call the best you can make it.

If you do get called in for an interview, be prepared for a really lousy experience.  Interviews are never fun, and for some reason Microsoft seems to delight in beating people up.

There are books about it (one example is: “How would you move Mount Fuji”), and lots of anecdotes on the internet.  It all should be taken with a grain of salt, but like most things they are based in some fact.  In any case, the results are a day that is not a joy, but can be worth the pain.

Whatever you do, don’t exaggerate your experience or your skill set.  They will check up on it, and during the interview, they will test you on it.  Don’t be overly modest, it comes off as insincere.  Be confident of your abilities, but be careful about blowing smoke as people will detect it immediately, and that will be the end of it.  As in most things, a good balance is hard to find, but when you do, it will feel right and will seem sincere.  Practice these conversations, it will pay off.

Remember that your goal is to get in the door, not to get the perfect job.  Just work on that, then once you’re in, you can get what you really want in the long term.

As I said in the beginning, Microsoft isn’t that much different than most other companies, so most of this will apply to other companies as well.  Best of luck in your search.

I get asked this question frequently.  Why is my résumé so important?  Why can’t I just impress the hiring person in the interview?  Why can’t people see past my rough résumé, and see me for who I really am?  In this internet day and age, does a silly old, outdated piece of paper truly hold that much value?

When I get this question, I tell them that building a great résumé is the single most important thing you can do when searching for a new job.  Here’s why:

It takes four basic steps to get a new job: finding the right opportunity, getting considered seriously by the hirer, selling yourself, and closing the sale.  I will have a great deal more to say about the first and last of these, but right now let’s consider the middle part – the “sales process” of getting the job.  It helps to put yourself on the other side of the desk and consider what it takes to make you the top prospect for the opening.

Assume for a minute that you’re the one doing the hiring.  You somehow get out the news of the opening (more on that here), and sit back and wait for the prospects to roll in.  They invariably come in the form of a résumé, or CV (curriculum vitae) as some call it. [Side note: why is it that the two names for this document are French or Latin?  Why don’t we have a good English word for this thing?] Yes, you may get some emails, and certainly you’ll get a few referrals from friends and associates.  But even these will eventually end up coming down to looking over the résumé.

Why?  Because we all need some kind of shorthand way to represent who we are, what we’ve done, and most importantly, why we’re a great fit for the job opening.  Certainly the hiring manager could do a long parade of auditions like the American Idol circus.  But even there, some filtration happens.  Some lowly producer sifts through the tens of thousands of people and decides who among the throng will get their chance to be embarrassed on national television.  Simon Cowell and company simply can’t be expected to see thirty or forty thousand applicants.

The same is true for most jobs.  Some level of filtration happens at every step.  Perhaps it’s some HR person or recruiter who takes the first cut at the pile of applicants.  Perhaps the hiring manager themselves goes through them looking to separate the wheat from the chaff.  Or perhaps the software that the hirer is using allows them to do some filtration.

As another aside, don’t kid yourself, the use of software to filter résumés isn’t just for huge corporations.  It’s being used more broadly with every passing day.  If you use Monster, they filter your résumé to prevent clearly unqualified people from clogging the mailboxes of hiring managers.

When I led Microsoft’s HR world we got over 30,000 résumés a month, and we had two, sometimes three, shifts of people who did little but scan them into sophisticated software to build an extensive candidate database.  There is simply no way to handle these kinds of volumes without some assistance.  And as this software comes down in price and is more accessible to smaller companies, you bet they are using it.

In any case, the first step in hiring someone is filtering out the high-quality prospects from among all the candidates who apply.  You have to come down to a manageable list (perhaps 5-15) that you can seriously consider, and perhaps interview.  There is no better way to do that than by reviewing the résumés.

This means that, to most hiring managers, you are really little more than that one piece of paper. (Yes, it needs to be one piece of paper, more on that when I get to telling you how to create a great résumé, stay tuned.)

If you really want to be one of the people who gets that precious interview, this one piece of paper better be the best it can possibly be.  It is the first step in selling yourself into the job.  You can’t get to the interview, where you are so sure you’ll shine, without getting out of the pile and onto the short list.  The thing that drags you out of the hoard is that lowly piece of paper.

I will carefully discuss each of these steps (finding the opportunities, getting on the list, selling yourself, and closing the sale) in future articles.  But right now, get to work on your résumé.

Your résumé is probably the single most important element of your job search, and as such it deserves a great deal of your time and attention.