Our marketing hiring needs...right now

On a weekly basis, my team goes through the newly opened marketing and finance positions at Microsoft to assess the profiles requested. Instead of looking at what the job is, we are looking at the skill sets the hiring managers are asking for. This gives us some meaningful data to utilize for the development of candidate generation strategies. It matters less to us that we have a certain number of positions with a specific title. We care about who they want, what that person is doing right now and how we will find them. So at any moment, I can review what is open in marketing and finance and identify the skill "buckets" required. So I thought I would share some of this info to give you a snapshot of what we are looking for right now (I mean literally…this week). I’m going to start off with marketing since that is our biggest need. First a few caveats. These  skills buckets are not mutually exclusive. Any one person may fit into multiple profiles...we try to identify the highest priority profile for any given position…the top “thing” the hiring manager wants to see in someone’s background. So for example, a person who is doing marketing at an online retailer could be included under consumer inbound/outbound as well as content/editorial. A specific role may have elements of both of those profiles, but we only assign it the profile that we think is most important. We only assign each position to one bucket, but candidates can fit many. Also these are informal groupings of skills. You won't see anything on our careers site about these profile buckets. I’m just sharing them here so you can get a sense of what we are hiring for. It’s an exercise we use to make sure that we are connecting candidates with the recruiters that have open positions that fit their profile(s). This is how, when you send me your resume (heathham@microsoft.com), we know which positions you could be a fit for. We decided to create a system versus trying to remember the requirements for all the open positions.

Anyway, here's what we are looking for in marketing. We are currently tracking about 372 positions.  These are our larger profile needs:

We have 113 positions that we have classified as outbound marketing in the enterprise or small and medium business space. I’ve described this bucket in the past. These are the folks that do planning, strategy and execution around go-to-markets for products and audiences. That is 30% of our open marketing positions.

We have 53 positions that we classified as inbound product management in the same space. These are people working on product strategy (roadmap, value proposition, etc.). That’s about 14%.

There are 47 positions requesting a consumer product management skill set—either developing product strategy or marketing strategy (inbound or outbound). Thirteen  percent of open marketing positions fall into this category.

There are 33 positions requiring partner marketing experience (meaning marketing to or with partners).

There are 28 positions that have identified management consulting as the desired skill set. People with this type of background can also fit into a number of other roles/categories (inbound product management, strategic alliance, etc.). Eight percent of open positions.

The rest of the profiles…still quite a few of each type of position

Public and/or analyst relations: 18

Direct marketing or CRM: 16

Evangelism: 13

Partner relationship management: 8

Strategic alliance (build/buy/license strategy): 8

Brand: 7

Training: 6

Advertising, : 5

Market Research: 5

Events: 3

Licensing/pricing: 3

Content/editorial: 3

 Emerging markets: 2  

We also had a chunk of “other”.  I’ll keep you updated as we see shifts in our hiring demand profile. And don’t worry if you don’t see something on here that you think is you. You might be calling it something different. We are more than happy to take a look at your resume and do our best to match it to what is open.

Feel free to ask questions about any of the profile groups.

Comments

• Anonymous
  May 22, 2005
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  May 22, 2005
  I'm curious, what are you looking for on the Evangelism side? Are you looking for more Scoble's?

• Anonymous
  May 22, 2005
  Hi Heather, long time since I've commented, I'm still out here in SL. :)
  
  I really like this "skill buckets" idea vs. the specific job descriptions. Are these positions all based in the US or are you searching internationally?
  
  If this is only in the US, I'm also curious if you're looking for 372 positions right now (which seems like a lot to me), on average how many open jobs would your group be trying to fill? Or is this just a busy season?

• Anonymous
  May 23, 2005
  Jorge-I certainly hope you've sent us your resume ; )
  
  Chris-for more specifics on evalgelism roles, you can go to www.microsoft.com/careers and search by title or keyword. I don't know that we are looking for more "Scoble"s. There are variations within those types of roles. In general, strong technical experience with strong marketing/communication skills.
  
  Iam-good to hear from you. The positions that my team works on are all US based. Each of the subsidiary offices do their own recruiting (we are considered corporateUS sub here). It's hard to say what number of those hires that our team will impact (that's just marketing...we have finanace too thought it's smaller). I'll throw out about 25% but since our function is nerw here, I'm thinking about this being a benchmarking year...we are just learning how much we can impact. I wouldn't necessarily call it a busy season. We do see a bit of an uptick of hiring activity around the end/begining of the fiscal year. But usually, it's more about the engagement level of the managers versus the number of positions open.
  
  Hope that helps guys!

• Anonymous
  May 23, 2005
  I haven't sent it cause i havent found the skills map yet!! :-)
  
  i have a non-meme policy but re. musical eclecticness, i can't go pass emiliana torrino. her latest thing is 'fisherman's woman'; good for a lazy sunday arvo... she's of italian-icelandic background, which inevitably makes me think of harofiskur alla putanesca... must be morning tea time.

• Anonymous
  May 31, 2005
  Interesting... I like the world that you paint in your other entry. ;-)
  
  Quick one: do you have an idea of how hiring people like to see portfolios? A friend and I were discussing the portfolio approach... similar to artists, where example work is placed appropriately in folders to showcase your abilities. I admit its a nice idea... but is it worth it?

• Anonymous
  March 06, 2007
  Hello, I am an attorney from Mexico, my name is Viviana, and I have a confession to make, I want to change gears and work in marketing. That is what I like the most and being 26 years-old, I think I am still on time. Would you be interested in looking at my CV? I am moving to DC soon.

• Anonymous
  March 06, 2007
  Hi Viviana, I'd be happy to take a look at yuor CV, but I should let you know that all of the positions that my team works on require some previous marketing experience. Regardless, I would be happy to make your resume available to other recruiters that might have a match for your background!

• Anonymous
  October 05, 2007
  I have a degree in Marketing, and I have marketing experience as well, but it is hard to get hired in a Marketing capacity here in NC. I am willing to relocate. Could you look at my resume, to see if there is something that may be holding me back from obtaining a career in my field.

• Anonymous
  October 08, 2007
  Sure, I can look at it but I will tell you  that most of our marketing is located in Redmond, WA. Charlotte is primarily sales/services/support. So your difficulty finding somehting in NC may have less to do with your resume than the availability of marketing positions there.