Kenji Yamaguchi
My name is Kenji Yamaguchi and I’m a Recruiter for the Windows Live Experience organization. I’m also a long-time reader of this blog since far before my Microsoft days and am thrilled at the opportunity to contribute from the inside.
I’m fairly new to Microsoft as a Blue-Badge (since January 2008), but have worked with the company previously as both a vendor and contractor, and am another example that people do make the color change from Orange to Blue.
One thing that puts me on kind of the opposite end of the spectrum from some of our other bloggers is that I knew immediately out of college that I wanted a career in recruiting – I just didn’t know that it was a real career. Thinking back to those early days, one thing that really helped me was all the initial research I did into the industry, position, responsibilities and cultures of the companies involved. I wanted a clear picture of what I was getting myself into – and what I was missing – so I’d have no regrets. This led to some great experiences, eventually culminating in my current position with the Windows Live Experience team. I guess that’s part of why I’m blogging – I’d like to give other people easy access to similar resources for their own decision-making process.
As a Seattle native and graduate from the University of Washington (Go Huskies!), I’ve lived here my whole life and can’t image living anywhere else. I’ve recently caught a bit of the travel bug, and visited Japan last year; It was a bit of an adventure introducing myself as “Kenji Yamaguchi” and not speaking any Japanese :-). Next on the calendar is NYC and I’m looking forward to some sightseeing and photo ops with my new 8MP camera!
