Microsoft Competing on Talent

Microsoft Competing on Talent

Recruitment is regarded as one of the most important parts of HR because when the recruitment process is done right, future employees’ issues are minimized. For many years, Microsoft has managed to be successful due to its ability to recruit, motivate, and retain its employees.  Bill Gates had realized that exceptional people were required to write outstanding software that will enhance customer satisfaction globally. This has made Microsoft to be among the best companies in the world in attracting, developing, and retaining talented employees. Microsoft has achieved this through effective recruitment and selection processes that focus in identifying the best candidates with potential to bring positive results to the company. This paper will evaluate the recruitment practices at Microsoft and determine whether they align to the company’s objectives. Likewise, the paper will also evaluate Microsoft’s selection practices and whether they align to its business objectives.

Microsoft utilizes both internal and external sources of recruitment. One of the main external recruitment sources applied by Microsoft is campus recruitment. This was observed in the early days when Microsoft used to recruit people from elite educational institutions such as Yale, Harvard, and MIT among others. At the start-up days, Gates and the co-founder Paul Allen had made a decision to be hiring some of the most intelligent college graduates who were not necessarily experienced. In subsequent years, Microsoft saw the need to apply effective methods of recruitment in order to hire the best among all the candidates that were available. This was a positive move because the idea of hiring the brightest candidates was not as effective because they were so many and had to be selected through a competitive recruitment process.  It is important for managers to be involved in the recruitment process of their organizations because they are best placed to understand the type of people they need to hire. In relation to this, Gates considered assisting his managers to employ the best possible candidates as one of his main achievements.

The main focus in the recruitment process at Microsoft is to concentrate in hiring ambitious people who are also capable of thinking creatively. Indeed, this is a positive move because the success in the intellectual property business is largely determined by the effectiveness of software developers. For this reason, knowledge and experience of the candidates are not considered to be important. Actually, this is true because the intellectual property business is driven by technology that constantly changes. Hiring experienced people means that such people might be tempted to use their old skills to drive the company. However, recruiting candidates who are smart is a lifetime investment because they are likely to drive the company through innovation.

In the recruitment of human resource, it is important to identify the best candidates who can steer the set organizational objectives. Microsoft understands this quite well and subjects its candidates through an intense interview process. It is quite critical for the interviewers to understand the policies and business objectives of the companies they are recruiting for. This approach is applied in Microsoft where candidates are interviewed by company workers who test their problem-solving abilities and thought processes. In this regard, interviewers understand that objectives of Microsoft revolve around the ability to come up with new technological ideas.

In essence, managers should establish operational recruitment systems that will facilitate the identification of the best candidates. For instance, when Steve Ballmer was hired as an assistant to the president in 1980, one of his main responsibilities was to coordinate Microsoft’s recruitment. At this point, Ballmer was interested in recruiting people who were smart, could work hard, and were able to get things done. Indeed, this is in line with the best practices in human resource management where the primary focus in recruitment is to identify people who have the right skills to implement their employer’s objectives.

Best practices in HR management highlight that the recruitment needs of a company may be affected by its growth. As the company expanded, recruiting needs also increased prompting Microsoft recruiters to target more universities not just in the United States but also in other countries such as Canada and Japan as their main recruiting grounds. This approach made Microsoft to recruit fresh graduates who could directly apply the skills they had learned in school. When a company hires people who have worked in other companies, such people are required to unlearn their previous company values, technological approaches, and even work habits in order to fit in their new company.

Sometimes, such employees may take long to adjust to their new working environment and hence affecting their productivity.  This method of recruitment is only applicable when the number of people being recruited is not high. Ideally, in the late 1990s Microsoft started recruiting even outside colleges where it targeted people who had some experience in IT and had the potential to work for it. In particular, the use of more than 300 recruiting experts to identify the most talented people in the industry was a wise move because it aimed to develop a relationship with the potential candidates even before they were recruited. Furthermore, this increased the candidates’ chances of interest to work for Microsoft.

During recruitment, it is paramount to realize that a person who might be selected may either impact an organization positively or negatively. Bill Gates understood this well when he told Microsoft managers that if the company does not employ outstanding people, there are likely to be various problems with employee progression. This is because such a person will continue occupying a position that would have been occupied by a more helpful person. To ensure that only the best candidates were employed, Microsoft included an “appropriate” interviewer to be part of the interviewing group.   An “appropriate” interviewer understands the culture of Microsoft and therefore ensures that only those people who can embrace this culture are selected. This practice ensures that the people who are recruited are fit to support the company’s goals. In practice, this can be affirmed by the belief of Microsoft managers that hiring an employee who is not outstanding can be equated with an unsuccessful appointment.

Human resource recruitment is considered to be an expensive process and it can even be more costly if the company ends up hiring the wrong candidate. With this understanding, Microsoft operates under the philosophy of hiring one less employee that the actual number required. Although this might affect the work output of employees, Microsoft covers this by employing people who are willing to go beyond their normal job description and even sacrifice to work for more hours than required.  When an organization has to handle large numbers of employees, it is critical to put up appropriate measures of how the applicants have to be shortlisted. For instance, by the mid 1990s Microsoft recruiters had to deal with more than 30,000 computer science graduates in the US who had the potential to work for Microsoft. Thereafter, they used to shortlist around 9,000 of such people and then call them for interviews.  These would then lead to approximately 900 candidates being invited to join Microsoft’s Redmond campus.

Fundamentally, recruitment practices at Microsoft are aligned to the business objectives of the company. For instance, the company has established a recruitment team that consists of professionals. The main purpose for this is to make sure that all the candidates who are recruited have the relevant skills that can be applied in the field of technology. Today, Microsoft targets the right candidates from technical colleges that are known to impact some of the best skills in technology to their students.  This ensures that all the applicants who qualify for recruitment have a technological background that is essential in the accomplishment of the company’s objectives.  Moreover, some of the managers at Microsoft affirm that recruiting is the company’s core competency as is demonstrated by its willingness to pursue the best talents regardless of where they live. Indeed, this shows the high value that the company holds for recruitment.

Effective staff selection requires good interviewing skills in order to identify the best candidates among the ones recruited. Microsoft guarantees this is done by appointing a team of highly trained professionals who have experience in conducting interviews. However, various approaches should be used to identify suitable candidates to fill up the required positions in a company.  For Microsoft Company, the interviewers tend to concentrate on the practical skills of the Job applicants. In my opinion, this is not the best approach because it fails to recognize people who are quite practical in applying their skills at work but are unable to express themselves verbally. By using this approach, there is a high likelihood of some useful candidates being left out in the selection process after recruitment.

By targeting the brainy students from some of the most established colleges in the United States, Microsoft was promoting the selection of people who could add value to the company. Similarly, the selection of qualified candidates increases the overall efficiency of a company.  In addition to having the appropriate skills for recruiting, the selection process requires the interviewers to have good listening and observational skills. This will enable them to analyze any presentations that the interviewees may be requested to make and listen to how they respond to the questions posed. Towards the end of 1998, Microsoft had more than 7,000 jobs to be filled.  This required the recruiters to be keen in ensuring that they selected the best candidates after the initial interviews. As a result of selecting qualified and deserved candidates, the cost of training and development is reduced because less training is required once they are employed.

Like the recruitment process, selection practices applied to Microsoft align to the company’s business objectives. Before the recruitment team identifies the candidates to recruit, the basic criterion is to involve people who have skills in software development and are aspiring to work at Microsoft. This sets the basis for staff selection after the initial recruitment process is held.  As an elementary practice, all the managers who are involved in the selection process look for the candidates with the best qualifications and who have the potential to of being creative. In reality, selecting candidates on the basis of their qualifications lead to job satisfaction in any organization. Indeed, the selection process at Microsoft is guided by one of Bill Gates’ policy, of allowing the best talent to work for the company. Actually, it was for this reason that Gates used to hold meetings with some of the superior candidates to convince them to accept working for Microsoft. As a result of the effective recruitment and selection practices, Microsoft has continued to dominate the development of computer software and is considered to be among the best employers in the world.

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