Last week, I wrote about recruiting talent in spite of yourself. Yesterday ZDNet had a great article on how Microsoft's internal culture assumes if you are talented, then you must want to work for them.
Among the charges leveled at Gates, Ballmer and crew: Job candidates have been turned off by Microsoft arrogance, and the company's extensive interview process works against hiring fresh thinkers.
The company is working to change its long-standing reputation for haughtiness in hiring, said Abilio Gonzalez, general manager in charge of recruiting. He said Microsoft is trying to convince job seekers that the world's biggest software company is a great place to work, "instead of assuming that everyone would want to work at Microsoft." Microsoft boasts that about 90 percent of those offered jobs these days accept them–a higher rate than in past years.
Over the weekend, I randomly pulled out an old favorite, Antitrust. While the movie can be hokey and melodramatic, it's fun and still captures some of the cultural truths of high-stakes competitive recruiting. When reading the ZDNet article, I was reminded of the fictional CEO's arrogance in Antitrust. This arrogance is a holdover from the self-important 90s where companies like Microsoft acquired startups as if they were bulk candy and some computer science college grads with no experience started jobs with six figures.
We are witnessing cultural scraps from the 90s where Gates and Ballmer are uncomfortably struggling with Microsoft's culture and its world-wide reputation. Some of the criticism has merit and some doesn't. Culture must be deliberate and managed like a project. That might be hard for Microsoft who is notorious for missing major deadlines. Its culture needs to be as nimble as the market itself, changing with the times, progressive, and positive. A company the size of Microsoft can't afford to operate with a reputation of arrogance, especially when it's not such a bad place to work. They are better than most companies I've worked for and can provide a pretty stable career path if you don't mind living in Redmond. As a Microsoft employee friend of mine once said: "It's great to work here, even if there is a little too much creepy Gates worship going on."
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