Joel on Software has some good advice when it comes to recruiting talent, even if you have a negative public image.
That's a recruiter who works for Microsoft talking, not me.
So, my point to Gretchen, sympathetically, was, “recruiting has to be done at the Bill and Steve level, not at the Gretchen level.” Want to solve Microsoft's recruiting problem? Open a downtown development center in Pioneer Square and another one South of Market in San Francisco. Then split up the company into lots of small, well-funded startups and give people stock options in their own products, which actually have a fighting chance of growing. Then create some spinoffs with their own personality. Spin off X-Box so it feels more like a cool gaming startup rather than a big corporate “General Motors Trying to Sell Hip Things to an Appealing Demographic.” I'm sure there are a million other ideas, but none of the kind of decisions that would make Microsoft an even more attractive workplace are in the hands of the recruiting department or even the hiring managers. No wonder there's so much frustration.
This important because companies are not a single, living being. They are only perceived to be that way and presented that way by the media. Andersen Consulting was destroyed because they were perceived to be the partner-in-crime with Enron. In reality, they had thousands of emloyees working with hundreds of other clients that had nothing to do with Enron.
A negative public image has to be fought by a deliberately constructed internal culture and sophisticated public relations effort. If you have problems recruiting and keeping talent, maybe it's time to talk to your company's leadership.
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