

Microsoft wants 20,000 extra green cards per year too








Source: The Seattle Times

Comments     Threshold


RE: Microsoft is correct
By bsd228 on 11/26/2012 9:07:04 PM , Rating: 2
> I currently do interviews for a top five tech company and all I can say is MS is correct. I have done 56 phone screens and in person interviews over the past 11 months. I do at least one per week, sometimes several when a team is on a hiring binge. The quality of candidates from the US is very low on average. Only a handful of the screens ever makes it to an interview, and only a fraction of them are hired. Of that group, only one was a US citizen.

"top five," eh? So basically we're talking about an interview process that is a series of irrelevant questions, or massive dick waving by the interviewers, and any one person can nix the process. My company had to finally send out a directive that the limit for interviews is 5 because we were thinning the herd to extinction.

Companies have decided they want turnkey employees, who have x+1 years experience in a technology that has been around for x years, and when they don't find that, they cry and run for an H1-B. Past work experience matters not, even though your own words describe process issues, not technology ones.

It's also true that with the latest web boom cycle, the available talent level is down - the better people are as a rule employed and need to lured away from an existing job. But MS doesn't have much chance getting me to interview...and neither does Google.

RE: Microsoft is correct
By Reflex on 11/26/2012 9:50:21 PM , Rating: 2
Nope, not at all. In fact our loops are exactly 5 people, each with a competency they have to examine. The questions are required to be real world, and we are to examine how they approach the problem as much as the answers they come up with. Only two people in that loop can invalidate a candidate(hiring manager and one other who's from outside the team), everyone else is advisory. We hire people who fail competencies all the time if they raise the bar in other areas. The failed interview simply becomes a piece of info for the manager to know where the candidate's development needed areas will be.

We also have a policy where almost anyone can get a phone screen, and a good chunk of my team comes frmo 'unconventional' backgrounds(ie: not degreed). Including myself.

At the end of the day what we are looking for most is demonstrated ability to learn quickly and adapt to ambiguous situations where requirements are not always clearly defined ahead of time. Because that is reality in today's tech industry. Those who can demonstrate an understanding of scaling and long term support win major bonus points, although they typically are the ones who come from other major companies.

