My name is Matt Aberham and I work on Microsoft’s Online Advertising Platform. I'm focused on hiring software development engineers for our Search and Display advertising platforms.

One of my big focus areas is encouraging managers to hire candidates that have 70-80 percent of the skills and experience necessary to do the job and the aptitude to learn the rest. I try to find candidates a healthy balance of leveraging their existing skills with what he/she wants to do.

If designing and developing large scale web services maps to what you are looking for I’d love to hear from you!

All recruiters have different theories on how much to “prepare” their candidates the morning of the interview. There’s only one tip I like to give candidates when they come in, and it’s really more common sense than inside information: Question us.

As Kenji pointed out, most of those pesky Microsoft logic questions have been retired. That being said, it’s important to realize every candidate will absolutely get questions to which they don't know the answer. This is intentional and speaks to one of the constant challenges Microsoft employees face: dealing with ambiguity. On a daily basis as an employee, you’ll be put in spots where you don’t know the answer (or maybe there isn’t even a right answer).

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This article was originally posted in August 2008 and remains both a popular post and a poignant question.

Does a failed startup on your resume count against you?
This is a great question. In classic recruiter style, I’m going to be very definitive and say: I think that it depends. :-)

Startups are great because they force people to wear multiple hats, work in a resource-constrained environment, and think about how what they work on interacts with other pieces of the puzzle rather than of owning a very narrow project or piece of code. While that entrepreneurial flexibility is highly desirable in any size org, a pattern of several in a row might unfairly brand someone as a serial startup person, likely to bolt every year or so.

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This article was originally posted in January 2009 and continues to be one of our most read pieces.

Understanding that every recruiter conducts initial candidate screens differently, I wanted to share some of the themes that come up with candidates I don’t end up moving forward with. JobsBlog has lots of great tips for ways to improve your phone screen, but here are some things to avoid.

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Not long after JobsBlog started in 2004, Gretchen answered a reader who wanted to know what he should say when an interviewer asked him to describe his strengths and weaknesses.

Six years later, that post is still one of the most popular articles on this site. Gretchen’s advice remains relevant, of course, and we encourage you to read it – but we thought we’d give you an update from varying viewpoints. Check out what Kenji, Lisa and Matt have to say about this infamous interview question!

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Before we open a new req at Microsoft, the recruiter sits down with the hiring manager and discusses the role, the business problem to be solved and where we might find this person. (Shocking, game changing, inside information I know, but bear with me… ). The reason I bring this up though, is that in my Advertising R&D -Development org, the problems we’re trying to solve sometimes have very little to do with the domain of Online Advertising.

Since the launch of Bing, we’ve seen steady growth in our search share and tons of positive feedback on the features and user experience. This is all goodness, but frankly, none of Bing’s accomplishments matter if we can’t monetize them. This is where the Ad Platform comes in. Now that we’ve redrawn the search battlefield, we have to deliver a “just as compelling” Advertising Platform to take advantage of all these new eyeballs!

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There was a great bit in the original Clerks film where Dante and Randal discuss if one’s stated function always ties to what they actually do… (As pointed out in the past by Kenji!). Anyone who’s been around the technology industry knows that the meaning of a job title differs greatly from company to company. There’s a famous blog by Steven Sinofsy that dissects the difference between the PM role at Microsoft vs. anywhere else, so no need to revisit that here.

I did want to call out though that when you get on the phone with a recruiter, they will pay less attention to the title you held at company X and more attention to the responsibilities you performed in that role. I bring this up because there’s been a few times where I’ve seen something interesting on a resume that made me think about them for a title different than what they are working as now.

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This post is courtesy of Bing Jobs Blog:

I’m a big Top Chef fan and I love to cook, but I don’t really consider myself a “Foodie.” There are too many concepts I'm totally ignorant of that are old news to most Foodies. For instance, the whole concept of deconstructed cooking was foreign to me until started watching the show.

Given the large number of ingredients Microsoft uses to create our online services, I thought it would be fun to look at some of the main groups that combine to deliver Bing, courtesy of our OSD Career Site:

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CNN and CareerBuilder recently published a list of the 43 weirdest things said in job interviews, and we asked for your stories. We also asked our JobsBloggers. Here is Matt's answer.

I knew this interview was going to be a memorable one when I picked the candidate up in the lobby and he had his sunglasses (Yes, even in Seattle!)  resting on the top of his head.

I always encourage my candidates to stay comfortable and relaxed, but when we got back to my office his posture in the chair was more appropriate for a day of couch surfing instead of intense interviews.

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Dear JobsBlog: I've never done a lunch interview before, but I've heard horror stories about candidates being so nervous they forget basic table manners or get a huge chunk of broccoli stuck in their teeth. How can I enjoy my meal and still impress a hiring manager? Any suggestions on what to order and how to avoid awkwardness?

-Apprehensive Appetite

Dear Apprehensive Appetite: You've probably seen us mention on this blog that answers to many questions we receive vary from recruiter to recruiter. That said, we decided to take some bites of advice from several JobsBloggers on this topic. Put your headphones on and get your elbows off the table for podcasts from Matt, Lisa and Janelle that will help improve your lunch interview techniques!

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