I especially liked the section where he hi lights Microsoft's hiring practice as one of the main differentiators from its competitors
""" So we had a very intensive interview process. The last interviewer was called the
hiring manager, but after every interview, as the candidate left the office, the interviewer sent out an
email and wrote the result of the interview. So by the end of the 6th interview, the hiring manager
had all reviews but the one where the guy was at that time. The first word on the write-up had to be
“hire” or “no-hire”. There wasn't any "maybe" or... "This guy would be good in some other group".
It was ... “I would work with this guy” or not. “I think he would work into my group” or not.
So the hiring manager then had all of these write-ups and all of these decisions or
recommendations. And he would decide whether or not to offer the guy a job. If we offered the guy
or gal a job, then the next day would be spent in trying to talk them into realizing how good it was to
work at Microsoft; that it's a good place to live and all those things…being nice to them for a
change.
Of the 10 we'd bring back, we'd hire one. So we hired about 1 out of every 100
that we initially interviewed. So the total picture is: we've interviewed 10 guys, 8 times each - 80
interviews. We interviewed 100 guys one time, 100 interviews − so we've done about 200
interviews for every person we hired. If you think about hours - that's a lot of hours, and recruiters
aren't going to do that. Recruiters aren't going to test coding ability. We had recruiters who
managed the logistics and managed the reference checks. We also did aggressive reference checks −
we had a whole series of questions we'd ask. Most people doing reference checks are trying to be
kind and nice and so people aren't as accurate as you'd like them to be. So you come up with a
whole set of questions like: “I know this guy is really good, but what is the one thing you'd counsel
him to improve?” Or you'd try to get them to reveal what were some of the deficiencies"""
I especially liked the section where he hi lights Microsoft's hiring practice as one of the main differentiators from its competitors
""" So we had a very intensive interview process. The last interviewer was called the hiring manager, but after every interview, as the candidate left the office, the interviewer sent out an email and wrote the result of the interview. So by the end of the 6th interview, the hiring manager had all reviews but the one where the guy was at that time. The first word on the write-up had to be “hire” or “no-hire”. There wasn't any "maybe" or... "This guy would be good in some other group". It was ... “I would work with this guy” or not. “I think he would work into my group” or not. So the hiring manager then had all of these write-ups and all of these decisions or recommendations. And he would decide whether or not to offer the guy a job. If we offered the guy or gal a job, then the next day would be spent in trying to talk them into realizing how good it was to work at Microsoft; that it's a good place to live and all those things…being nice to them for a change.
Of the 10 we'd bring back, we'd hire one. So we hired about 1 out of every 100 that we initially interviewed. So the total picture is: we've interviewed 10 guys, 8 times each - 80 interviews. We interviewed 100 guys one time, 100 interviews − so we've done about 200 interviews for every person we hired. If you think about hours - that's a lot of hours, and recruiters aren't going to do that. Recruiters aren't going to test coding ability. We had recruiters who managed the logistics and managed the reference checks. We also did aggressive reference checks − we had a whole series of questions we'd ask. Most people doing reference checks are trying to be kind and nice and so people aren't as accurate as you'd like them to be. So you come up with a whole set of questions like: “I know this guy is really good, but what is the one thing you'd counsel him to improve?” Or you'd try to get them to reveal what were some of the deficiencies"""