Last Friday at NCCE Seattle we announced that our next homepage photo contest will kickoff on March 29 and this time there’s a twist. We’re asking students in the United States to submit photos to help celebrate the 40th anniversary of Earth Day and the winning photo will be displayed on the Bing homepage on April 22, Earth Day itself!

In addition to the grand prize winner seeing their photo on Bing.com, we’ve pulled together some great prizes for both students and their schools.

Winners across the four age groups (ages 5-10, 11-13, 14-17 and 18+) will win a trip for two to the Microsoft Campus to take part in a Bing editorial team meeting where we pick images for future homepages. Additionally, each winner will receive equipment from HP and Canon to help build digital photo resources at their school. Prizes for individual winners and their schools across the four age groups will total over $70,000.

· 1st place prizes: Individuals receive an HP Pavilion desktop and monitor and a “Digital Photo Lab” for their school.

· 2nd place prizes: Individuals receive an HP Pavilion desktop and monitor and a “Digital Photo Kit” for their school.

· 3rd place prizes: Individuals receive an HP Pavilion desktop and monitor and a “Digital Photo Starter Set” for their school.

And here’s the “everyone wins” part. There’s a great opportunity to help other classrooms in need during the voting stage from April 13th to the 19th. Bing will give a $5.00 GivingCard for DonorsChoose.org to the first 20,000 people who vote each day. Voters can then decide what classroom projects (like math, science, art, reading) will benefit from Bing’s donation. If you do the math, we’re talking up to $100,000 a day to help schools across the country. Each day you can return to the site to cast another vote and have an opportunity to pick up another GivingCard.

Bing helps students explore the world with our rich homepage imagery every day, so we’re excited to see what the country’s students think we might all want to discover.

To find out more about the contest, including the submission and voting process and prizes for the finalists, visit http://earthdayphotocontest.com/. Teachers will be able to order free posters for their classrooms in the coming days, as well as take advantage of other contest resources on the site.

Liz Tassey Gerber, Bing

Read Part One: How to prepare and what to expect here.

Now that you’re prepped and rested, you’re ready for the big day!

First thing’s first
Not to sound like your mother, but  – even if you’re not a breakfast person (like me) – make sure to eat something before you start your day. You will likely have a chance to refuel at a lunch interview, but it’s important to be at your best during the morning sessions. Being hungry and anxious for lunchtime can distract you from your interviews and affect your performance.

For all you coffee drinkers (myself included), be mindful about how much caffeine you have. I find that if I need to do a presentation or something similar, the more coffee I have – the more anxious I get, and it impacts my confidence level.

Transportation & arrival
For those of you who haven’t visited the Puget Sound area and aren’t familiar with our campuses here… we have a few. There are over 40,000 employees in over 100 buildings in four cities. Our Redmond campus is the largest and, even for me, can sometimes be difficult to navigate (I heart my Garmin). Fear not, however. Your interview scheduler will send you a link to Bing Maps for you to plan your route.
 
For those of you interviewing in Redmond, your interview day will probably start in our recruiting building. Please plan to arrive 30 minutes ahead of time to account for traffic, getting lost and checking in with reception. If you are early – we have a new candidate experience lobby for you to explore while you wait for your interview time to roll around. Be sure to get your picture taken and tell us about yourself on the HP computers… You’ll end up as part of a video mural on our wall!

Meet your recruiter
Your recruiter will come down to get you and take you to their office or one of our many focus rooms for your first interview. Each of us recruiters is a bit different in our approach, so not every candidate will end up with the same experience.

I’ve typically had phone interviews with my candidates before a decision is made to bring them in to interview. That being the case, I only ask a few questions of my candidates. The rest of the time, I walk candidates through their schedule, explain what to expect from the day, discuss compensation and benefits and answer their questions. Before I end the interview, I schedule a call with candidates one to two days after the interview to go over feedback.

Where to go
Most interviews take place in only two buildings: the recruiting building and the site of the group with which you are interviewing. You won’t have to worry about trying to find your way though. We have a shuttle service on campus to get you from place to place. Your recruiter will fill you in on how to use them.
   
As you ride in the shuttle on your way to your next interview, take the time to gather your thoughts, review your resume and your talking points, jot down some questions you want to ask the group, etc. When you arrive, let the receptionist know you’re there to meet with your interviewer and relax.

Let the fun begin
When your interviewer comes down to get you for your interview, bear in mind that they don’t interview people as often as your recruiter. If you need something to drink (we have a variety of beverages available in all our kitchens), or need to hit the restroom – don’t be shy: ASK! They might not think to offer. This applies to both on your way to your interviews and on the way back to the lobby in between interviews. The reason I mention this is that unlike our recruiting lobby, most of our buildings do not have access to restrooms or refreshments unless you have a badge (access card).

In between each interview, you will be taken back to the lobby where you will have five or ten minutes until your next interview – unless you need to travel to another building, in which case your schedule will give you 15–30 minutes of travel time. Our interviewers understand it is a long day and they want you to be able to be at your best. If you find you need a bit longer of a break, please ask.

I’ll tell on myself here. I’m a diabetic and during one of my interviews (either for the position I have now, or my contract role, I don’t remember), my sugar started to drop. It’s an odd feeling… imagine having consumed 10 cups of coffee. The person I was meeting with was one of the big decision makers and, as I was on a roll, I didn’t want to jinx anything so I kept going. I made it through the interview, grabbed a soda, and headed on my way home. I immediate begin to develop concerns that my low blood sugar came across as being nervous or anxious and that I might not have won him over. Obviously, I got the job, but if I had it to do over again, a simple, “I’m so sorry, do you mind if I grab a soda. My sugar’s a little low,” would not have impacted the situation or influenced his decision. Not to mention save me some of the stress I experienced while waiting to find out if I got the job. Moral of the story – if you need something: ask.

On some occasions, due to scheduling issues, you can have up to an hour break in between your interviews. While this can extend your day, it can be a welcome break for you and a chance to reflect on your prior interviews. When assessing your performance, look back and see which questions (or coding problems, for technical folks) you could have answered better. Interviewers share feedback with their peers and, often times, if you didn’t hit the nail on the head the first go around, another interviewer may ask you a similar question. Showing that you are self-aware and can have a new answer/solution to the question/problem can go a long way when the team makes a hiring decision.

Lunch
As I mentioned in my prior post, you will likely get lunch. The lunch interview can be a bit more casual and relaxed than your other interviews. Additionally, it tends to be longer – usually 90 minutes, though sometimes it will only be an hour. Your interviewer will take you to one of our 39 cafes. There are a variety of food choices and local restaurant choices available in each of our cafes. We offer Vietnamese, Indian, Mexican, Italian, Egyptian, Chinese food and more throughout all of their locations (choices vary by location). All of the cafes tend to have a grill (burgers, etc), salad bar, sandwich bar, pizza bar, soups, entrée bar, and an espresso stand serving Starbucks© Coffee. It is cafeteria style, so if you’re like me, make a full loop around the café and see what looks the best before making a choice. Once you load up your tray, find your interviewer so they can pay for your lunch. Grab a free soda out of the coolers and head off to find a table.

Most interviewers will primarily talk about their team, projects, technologies, etc. for the first half hour or so. This gives you time to eat without having to worry about answering a lot of questions in between bites. Now, I will give a disclaimer and say, again, most interviewers do this. If you get one that dives right into some tough questions, do your best! One strategy you could try is to ask a very vague, open ended question so they do the talking and you can start shoveling in that food.

After you’re done eating, expect the intensity to increase a bit as they will dig in with some of the tougher interview questions. Some interviewers will even take you back to their office for additional questions if they have time to do so.

How long will the day last?
I know that some people have asked, “Is it true the longer the interview day goes, the better I am doing?” In the words of our Legal and Corporate Affairs attorneys, “It depends.” There are several reasons that can impact how long your day goes, including some of the following:

•    They may decide you’d be a better fit on a different team or in a different job discipline and bring in other interviewers.
•    You’re doing well and they want you to meet with more senior members of the team.
•    There are contrasting opinions for the interviewers you’ve met with and they’re looking for others to give their opinions as well.
•    You may have demonstrated an unanticipated strength in an area someone on the loop is not familiar with, so they may add someone who is.

And, yes, if the team decides you’re not a good fit, your interview day may tie up after a few interviews. However, there are other reasons this could happen such as scheduling issues with people on the team or an urgent problem that requires the team’s attention. In some cases, we may have to reschedule some of your interviews for another day.
 
I want to stress that a decision not to move forward with a hire is not necessarily a bad thing. As I mentioned previously, I did not get hired after my first interview. And frankly, I’m glad I didn’t... for a couple reasons. I learned a lot about what it was like to go through an interview here, and was able to better prepare for my next interview. Secondly, after a person was hired in the role I didn’t get, and I saw what she ended up doing – I realized I wasn’t as qualified as I thought I was and likely would have struggled in the role. I’m much more successful in the role I have today, and, as I’ve grown, I’ve been able to take on some projects and responsibilities that role has – but at a pace where I can be set up for success.

The conclusion
When you are finished for the day, your last interviewer will let you know that you are free to go. Hop in a shuttle and return to the recruiting building. You will not need to meet with your recruiter – just find your car and head on your way. Whether you’re off to the airport, a hotel, or home, treat yourself to a great dinner – you’ve earned it.

Now comes the worst part, at least it is has been for me: the wait. Depending on the number of candidates being considered for the position, it can take anywhere from a day to two weeks before you hear anything. Give your recruiter at least two days before you check in – frequently, we need to talk with the hiring manager who is often waiting to circle back with all of your interviewers.

As I mentioned, I schedule calls with my candidates to go over feedback one to two days after their interviews. Even if I don’t have a final decision, I like to at least touch base and try to set expectations as to when I might have a definitive answer. I’d encourage you to make a point of asking your recruiter to setup a similar call if they don’t offer. If I don’t have a final decision the day of my follow-up call, I like to use email to keep people updated and do my best to call you once I know the final decision. There have been times I’ve emailed people when I had a decision and didn’t have the time to call. I suspect that most of peers work the same way.

I understand that some of you are, no doubt, curious about what kinds of questions are asked during the interviews and what hints, tips or suggestions may be available. Well, you’re just going to have to wait for Part Three! Look for it on JobsBlog late next week.

–Ryan

Try a new approach to finding out more about a company and their open positions with... online career events. Regardless of if the event is with Microsoft, other companies or hosted by a third-party recruiting company, online career events are a great way to network and find out more about open opportunities. 

If you are in the job market, it is worth checking out these events since a company will likely host or participate only if they have a larger number of openings within a team or across their company. Online events are still limited in frequency since employers are trying to see if the events a good way to reach talent – but they are definitely gaining in popularity. 

To find an online career event – try the following:

• Visit the specific company’s career site – sometimes these are advertised directly on the site.
• Join the community that the company has created across various social media sites such as Facebook/LinkedIn/Twitter/etc. We often use these sites as a medium to advertise.
• Read recruiting blogs maintained by the company (obviously, you have already found this site, which is a great start).

On that note, I want to quickly share with you the following: 

Microsoft Services will be hosting an international career event on March 8th. The Services group encompasses the consulting, technical support and customer service teams who help customers and partners discover and implement high-value Microsoft solutions that generate rapid, meaningful and measurable results.

To find out more on this event, Microsoft Services opportunities internationally (positions outside of the US) and to participate in online chats and webcasts with Microsoft representatives, click here. 

For those that do participate, let us know your thoughts on the event!

-Anne

'Softie in Question: Jeremy Tillman

Job title: SDE, Home & Small Business Server

How did you come to arrive at Microsoft?
I was born and raised in Gary, Indiana. Back in ‘99, when I was in about 8th grade, my brother brought home a Gateway computer in that black & white “cow box.” It had a whole 7 gigs of storage and that nice little AOL Internet package. I was the first person on my street with a personal computer.

Everybody on the block started coming to me for computer advice. If you needed t-shirts made, business cards, tickets – I did it all. When Yahoo! Chat was hot, everybody used to come to the house and try to play around on it.

My sister worked at a medical office and soon I was helping to set up their network. After high school graduation, I worked for the school board and created a database to organize all of their building blue prints.

Sounds like you had a lot of tech entrepreneurship experience by a young age. What was the next step?
I didn’t really know what a computer engineer did, but I loved computers and, so, I went off to Purdue to study computer engineering. I aced any class that was engineering-oriented, but overall I had some difficulties with my GPA. My high school experience wasn’t too challenging and I don’t think I was that well prepared.

When I went to my first career fair, the recruiter looked at me and said “I can’t talk to you unless I you have a 3.0.” He handed back my resume and proceeded to look right past me like I wasn’t even there.

How did you bridge the gap between your computer skills and the standardized requirements of the job application process?
I was working at a job fair, checking that the guest companies had everything that they needed, setting up their computers etc., and I got into a discussion with the guy at the Microsoft booth. 

He wasn’t an HR person. He was an engineer. I asked him what his job was like from day to day. He just explained what he did and then he turned around and asked me, “What do YOU do from day to day?”

I told him about everything that I worked on and the different coding projects that I’d done. He started to question me and… I know my stuff. If you question me, I’m gonna go deeper and deeper. He was grasping what I was saying. It was really refreshing. Too many companies discriminate based on a GPA or how somebody ranks you and not on your actual knowledge. They standardize things and, instead, should appreciate what kind of new ideas you bring to the table.

Two weeks later, I got an email saying “We want to interview you for the Explore Microsoft program” I never imagined that I'd be going to Seattle to work for a company like Microsoft. When you come where I come from, you just don’t see that kind of stuff.

Tell me a bit about what it's like to be an Explorer.
As an Explore intern, I was hired in the Small Business Server team. You aren’t hired to work a specific position. They say, “We’re going to give you a project and you’re going to go through all of the disciplines to see where you best fit in.”

Our Explorer team was from University of Puerto Rico, Michigan, USC and there was me, from Purdue. We had a nice little mix. Our project was to create a tool for the product to help manage user information. We spec’d out our project, developed it and tested it.

The manager came in and told us to code it in a way that none of us knew. It wasn’t about reusing our existing skills, it was about how we learned new things and explored different options. Microsoft really respects and appreciates a person’s potential. We didn’t just sit around in training classes. I learned to code in C#. It was an entirely new world for me. After that summer I had a great grasp on C# and a lot of inspiration for my future career.

And that future career came on pretty quickly after that, huh?
I was a 2007 Explore Intern, a 2008 Intern and, in June 2009, I started as a full-time employee here at Microsoft.

LINKS 
Learn more about the Explore program here (you must click on the Explore Microsoft tab in the left-hand-side nav bar).

This is a cross-post from Bing Search Blog.

Starting today, Bing will be participating in full force at what’s shaping up to be another stellar SMX West (March 2-4, Santa Clara CA). Every SMX show is a special one for Bing. But this one is super special for one reason – we’re bringing Steve Ballmer! 

This is Steve’s first ever conversation with the search community at an industry event. Danny Sullivan, editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land and co-chair of SMX, sits down with Steve to discuss Microsoft’s commitment to search and how Bing is working to evolve the search experience. 

In addition to Steve’s keynote chat, you’ll find Bing and Microsoft Advertising engaged with the community all across SMX in a number of ways. Read the full Bing Search Blog post and a quick summary of where you can find Microsoft at SMX here.

Who says that college is fun and work is boring?

Work life at Microsoft is anything but the cubicle routine found at many contemporary companies. Among a universe of other perks, benefits and support, Microsoft hosts diverse and dynamic speakers who keep employees in touch with the cutting edge (if not the future) of technology.

Yesterday, I saw a speech by Craig Mundie and – a couple hours later – a presentation by Ben Huh. Mundie is Microsoft's Chief Research and Strategy Officer and part of President Obama's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. Huh is the CEO and Founder of the Cheezburger Network: over 30 popular humor sites such as I Can Has Cheezburger, GraphJam and FAIL blog. His sites attract over 13 million daily visits.

The two talks ran from the highest levels of tech research down to addictively lowbrow Internet humor… and both speakers blew my mind.

Mundie argued that we are on the verge of a new technology revolution with Azure leading a seamless client + cloud connected platform and Project Natal as the gateway to the natural user interface (NUI) era. Mundie tempted the imagination with visions of advanced NUI that emulates all of the human senses, life-like avatars and computer “rooms” where you are surrounded by wall screens and are effectively "inside the computer."

Mundie pointed out that Microsoft is the only single company that has invested in all of the different aspects that are necessary to move forward into this new world of technology.

Huh, on the other hand, discussed how he built an online empire of user generated content based on Internet memes – all since 2007. The former journalism student takes simple ideas, like Lolcats (pictures of cute kitties with misspelled captions), and delivers reliably humorous material to the masses. Huh claimed that while content is still king, his role is not to determine and shape content like a traditional publisher/editor. His innovation is to maintain the community around the meme and let the users generate content and decide for themselves what should lead.

Both talks were packed with Microsoft employees and were webcast internally for those who couldn't make it in person. The day set my mind buzzing with inspiration, insight and excitement about what I'll learn on my next lunch or coffee break at Microsoft.

No matter if you are just out of college or an experienced professional, your upcoming interview at Microsoft is bound to conjure all sorts of emotions. Most candidates are excited, nervous, anxious, ecstatic or some combination of all of the above.

Regardless of what you might be feeling, this three-part article is intended to help you prepare for your interview. It will give you a sense of what to expect on the day of the interview, as well as some hints and tips to help you be successful.

Part 1: Preparation and the day before your interview...

It’s important that you do your homework before you arrive at Microsoft. Always study the group with which you will interview. Research the product(s) developed by that group and check for news mentions. Come prepared with questions about the product and feature ideas. Also give thought to questions that will help you understand the team and Microsoft as a whole (i.e. What do you like about working on this team? What do you think sets your group apart from others at Microsoft? etc.)

It is useful to imagine yourself as the person interviewing a candidate for their team. A candidate who is not familiar with the product or isn’t curious about the team will likely not leave a good impression with the interviewer. If you don’t show passion and excitement about the team and their product, they’ll wonder why you’re interviewing for their team.

If you’re interviewing for one of our engineering disciplines, you might want to brush up on your core computer science knowledge. While you can use any language in a coding problem, often times, the interviewer will want you to understand what a class is handling for you on the back end (think memory management, etc.). You may even want to do online research for sample coding questions in order to get some practice.

Spend some time reviewing your resume. Make sure to have examples of how you’ve used your listed skills – even if it was three years ago. Also, brainstorm a couple accomplishments for each position you’ve held. What I’ve found works for me is to jot down some bullets next to each position so I will remember what I want to highlight during the interview.

After you’ve prepared mentally for the interview, it’s time to figure out what to wear. Microsoft is known as a very casual workplace when it comes to attire. You’ll probably have at least one interviewer in jeans and a T-shirt and I’ve even had managers come to my office without wearing shoes. The most important consideration when choosing what to wear is: comfort. Don’t wear a suit or anything formal. Not only will you will stick out like a sore thumb, but you may feel awkward and uncomfortable.  I recommend dressing business-casual for your interview – as an example, khakis or jeans with a collared shirt for guys.

To make sure you’re able to give your best, plan to get a full night’s rest prior to the interview. If you are arriving from out of town, make sure to get to the Seattle-area no later than 6:00 pm the night before. This guarantees that you have plenty of time to get to your hotel, find a restaurant for dinner and relax before you turn in for the night. While this may not seem like a big deal, I’ve found it makes a big difference in how candidates perform during their interview day. Once, I had a candidate book the latest flight out of his local airport the day before the interview. His flight was cancelled and since his flight was the last one of the day, there weren’t any alternate flights available. He missed his interview and we had to reschedule everything.

That’s it, you should be ready for the big day. Also, check out Part Two where I describe the interview day itself. Part Three is coming soon...

About to graduate or just out of school? Poor job prospects and national economic woes got you down?

Never fear... help is on the way. Call it a bailout for recent college grads.

Today, Microsoft joined 15 other companies in the Invest In America Alliance, a national commitment to increase recent college grad hires. This shot in the arm for recent grad employment levels will result in 10,000 new college grad hires among the 15 participating companies and aims to push grad employment back over 2009 levels.

Have we piqued your interest?

... then read more about it here.

Or just go ahead and click on the pretty orange box below:

Recent Microsoft candidate, Aran Donohue, has written about his interview experience for his blog Little Computer Scientist. His story runs from stepping off the plane at Sea-Tac International Airport to taking the red-eye home to Toronto. Aran reflects on everything from his interactions with the Microsoft recruiter to the important suject of coffee in Seattle.

As JobsBlog aims to bring you unvarnished insight into Microsoft and the job interview process, we've run the complete, unchanged story below with the good, bad and ugly of his experience.

Aran's story:
I interviewed onsite at Microsoft this week. Here’s an assortment of thoughts and lessons learned, in roughly chronological order.

I flew in early on Monday and left late on Wednesday so I could spend some time exploring Seattle. This was a good move.

Day One: Arrival and Exploring Seattle
Microsoft provided a rental car that I picked up at Sea-Tac airport. At the rental desk I met and rapidly befriended another MS candidate who was interviewing for a SDET position. We both got Nissan Versas—a fun, small car with good kick and very tight brakes.

I drove straight to the hotel. First lesson, to be observed again and again over the next couple days: Seattle’s road signage is out to get you. It is actually malicious. I am imagining some angry, bitter and crazed road sign designer cackling in a basement, carefully crafting terrible navigational design. I know I’m not the only who thinks this.

Microsoft put me up at the Hilton in Bellevue. It’s a gorgeous place, and unlike some pricey hotels I’ve stayed at, the staff were actually friendly and helpful. The guy at the desk loaded me up with exploration recommendations, maps, and coupons. In the hotel, I met another Microsoft candidate who was hoping to join the Bing team.

We three candidates drove downtown to grab lunch at Etta in Pike Place market. Tasty, warm and cozy food with a wonderful server. The other two returned to the hotel, and I went to catch a boat tour of the harbor. Unfortunately the Argosy boat tours only run once a day in the winter, and I had missed the day’s trip. I wandered around downtown, saw a nice sunset, and went back to the hotel.

I was determined to have some Pacific Coast seafood, so I met up with one my new friends and we went to Sea Star in Bellevue. Bellevue doesn’t seem to have any nightlife, but it’s got good restaurants. The hotel gave us a coupon for a free appetizer. Lesson: Tell the hotel your plans, they might have good suggestions or freebies.

One thing I should mention: Microsoft provided a food budget of around $75 a day (15/20/40). I thought it was extravagant at first, but once I started eating around the area I realized that the restaurant costs in the area made it just reasonable. Stuff is just expensive out there…

Day Two: Microsoft
I had an overpriced breakfast at the hotel and then headed out to the Microsoft campus in Redmond for the day.

Lesson one: The traffic is awful on the way from Bellevue to Redmond. Google Maps and Bing both measured the trip at 8 minutes. It took me over 30. If I end up at Microsoft, I’m going to have to be very careful about where I live because I do not want to deal with that every day.

Lesson two: I needed to find my way to Building 111, where the Microsoft recruiters live. It turns out that Building 111 was bought from Honeywell, and it’s near a bunch of other Honeywell buildings, which confused this poor guy who was looking for signs that said “Microsoft.”

The lobby of Building 111 is tricked out. You’d think you’d just walked into a 23rd century spaceship. Multicolored modern furniture; a few new HP TouchSmart computers; young, jovial, smiling receptionists and a concierge; a Starbucks coffee machine.

I met my recruiter, who told me I’d be interviewing in the Windows division. It also turned out that GMail had spam-filtered an email she had sent me. (Eeeek!)

The Microsoft campus is enormous. I can’t communicate the scale of it. It’s a city. You can’t just walk from building to building—they have a fleet of Toyota Priuses to chauffeur people from place to place. (The brakes worked fine, thankyouverymuch.) My recruiter ordered a ride to send me to my interview-building for the day.

The first interview was straight-out technical. “Split a linked list into elements above and below the average of the list.” I did a simple two-pass solution, and we spent most of the time talking about coding practices and API design. I used an assert to crash if the linked-list was NULL, and my interviewer explained why it would be better not to fail in this case.

My second interview was a lunch interview. We walked over to a building that had a cafe — Good food, but nothing to compete with Facebook’s. After lunch, we came back to sketch an algorithm: Print the numbers 1..n^2 in a spiral, with 1 in the center and going outward.

My third interview was a “soft skills” interview. We talked about passions, tools, programming languages, some past experiences and that sort of thing.

My fourth interview was mostly technical. After a few “soft” questions we talked about an efficient algorithm to find the common ancestor of two nodes in a binary search tree.

My fifth interview felt like I was meeting the End Boss. It was with the manager of the team — a guy who had more than twenty years of experience at Microsoft. The problem was to print the permutations of a C string. I’ve been doing all sorts of functional programming lately, so I sketched an immutable-string recursive version in Haskell, with the intention of translating to C afterward. This was a brutally bad idea, because 1) String manipulation is a pain in C and 2) Of course the way to do it in C takes advantage of mutability. So I started off in a completely-wrong mindset.

One lesson across the interviews: Say what you want about language-independent interview questions, these guys wanted C.

I returned to Building 111, chatted a bit with the recruiter to debrief the day, and went back to the hotel.

I was happy that they didn’t waste any time telling me “pitching” Microsoft. At least one other large company treated me like I lived in a cave and felt it necessary to go over the breadth and depth of their businesses. Microsoft clearly respected my intelligence enough to know that I know about them. Also, thankfully there was no hint at any point of their brutally-condescending ”Hey Genius” recruiting marketing materials. That was a relief.

For dinner I went to Flo in Bellevue for (phenomenal) sushi. I met a friend-of-a-friend there… a guy my age who has been at Microsoft for a couple years. It’s very refreshing to get an unbiased, straight-dope opinion from an insider about the good and bad. I can’t speak highly enough about chatting with someone like this in a casual setting. It made me feel much more informed and comfortable. Interviewers and recruiters seem to think it’s helpful not to talk about negatives, but since I know there must be negatives, instead it just leaves me feeling like I’m in for some nasty surprises. So hearing about some negatives counterintuitively lets me feel better about a place.

Day Three: Explorations Part Two
Another day of exploration, this time with planning:

• Washington Park Arboretum, Japanese Tea Garden. The gardens were closed for the winter, unfortunately.
• Seattle Public Library. Colossal, gorgeous library, well worth a short visit.
• My first Mocha Diablo: Coffee with cayenne—a warming, delicious idea.
• Argosy cruise.
• Wandering around the ritzy Queen Anne neighbourhood and stellar views from Kerry park.
• Had a Mocha Sevilla: Coffee with chocolate and orange rinds. Lesson: Toronto’s coffee is easily as good as Seattle’s.

Some fun facts:

• Seattle gets less rain volume than most other coastal cities, but it’s spread out over nine months of overcast, drizzly days. 
• Seattle has one boat per ten residents.
• “Seattle” is the name of the Native chief who helped the settlers figure out where to build the port city.
• The giant orange cranes in the harbor can load or unload one 150-ton shipping container every sixty to ninety seconds.

I went back to the airport in the evening, hopped to Vancouver and then took the red-eye back to Toronto.
Lesson learned: No more red-eyes. I couldn’t sleep a wink, and made up for it with a 14-hour sleep last night.

All in all it was a good trip. I was impressed at every turn with Microsoft’s environment, professionalism and friendliness. I have to give it to them, they’re good at this stuff.

‘Softie in Question: McKenzie Eakin

Job title: Xbox LIVE Service Delivery Program Manager

That’s quite a title, what exactly does that mean?
Pardon the analogy, but I bartended in college, it’s:

*One part Back-end Community Strategy – setting the vision and direction for how we enable our customers to connect with each other and with us, from a behind-the-scenes systems and programs perspective. 

*Two parts execution – everything from managing the @XboxSupport Elite Tweet Fleet to the Xbox Ambassadors program, which recognizes and promotes good gaming and sportsmanship.

*And the whole cocktail is garnished with a LOT of Beatles Rockband.

Yeah, I see that you’ve got a Rockband set-up about ten steps from your desk.
We recognize mental breaks as productivity enhancers.  I’ve even had one-on-one meetings while playing Halo on LIVE.

You're at the nexus of gaming, social networking, television, music and enough other technologies to make my head spin.
We’re pushing into new frontiers in every direction. I mean, I got chills the first time that I saw the Project Natal promo video. And the community of interconnected Xbox LIVE users is growing like gangbusters.

How many people are we talking about?
Twenty million... give or take. We got a bump around the holidays.

That’s more people than, like, New York, LA and Chicago  – combined.
Those are just the number of Xbox LIVE subscribers. We have a lot more users out there who haven’t subscribed yet. We’re probably growing even faster than those cities.

I understand that you have an impressive background in both math and in business. Why Microsoft and not, say, finance?
I wanted to be somewhere that would satiate both the mathematician and the businesswoman in me. Once I found that everyone I met from Microsoft shared a consistently high level of intellectual intrigue and, frankly, a sense of humor – I knew it was home. That and there's only one Xbox LIVE, baby!

Finally, what keeps you here?
‘Softies + meaningful job + Pacific Northwest = duh.