So what is my actual job, you ask?

This is one of the things I like about Microsoft. It pretty much changes every year. No opportunity for stagnation around here! This year, I am going to learn a ton and do a little travel.

So as you may know, my role last year involved 2 things/teams:

1) prospect identification and engagement for marketing roles across Microsoft US. My team hit 150% of goal. Whee!\

2) US focused competitive intelligence and programs. This means that we generated leads for our recruiters and shared competitive info on our talent competitors. We also managed programs around things like hiring Microsoft alumni.

Well, it was fun, but... on to new things.

I have supported the marketing space since I started at Microsoft in 1999.It's kind of like the universe knew that if I got to ten years just focused on the same function, something bad was going to happen. I have LOVED supporting marketing and all the people I've gotten to work with. I get marketing. It's been fun, but I totally feel like I needed to focus on something new. My learning curve around marketing with respect to my role kind of petered out a while ago. And I have been asking to hand off the marketing work for a while. Guess it turns out that when your team goes well above and beyond goal, hand-offs are easier. So the marketing piece I own no longer (thanks Lisa!). I have no doubt that it will continue to be productive and fuel our marketing pipeline in the US for years to come.

As for the second part, well, I am keeping it....kind of. We will still be managing some programs for the US. One I am excited about is figuring out how we hire across the company for people earlier in their career (a few years out of undergrad). I love those "we haven't figured out how to do this yet" projects. The bulk of our work in the research space, though, will be similar to what we did last year except for one major thing. This year, we are all about international dev centers; specifically Ireland, Denmark, Israel, China, India and Boston.  I can't tell you how excited I am about this. Our job is to help our dev center recruiting teams do more and better by informing their candidate generation strategies through competitive intelligence. What does that mean? That we will be providing them information on who they should go after, when and where; providing them with leads, data, e-mail campaign support, training etc. So you'll have to excuse me a little bit if I gush over my job because I am so down with this kind of work, you don't even know. And it's all greenfields stuff. Gotta love building a practice from scratch. See why I spent so much time writing my business plan (and have been getting teased about the fact that it's 25 pages long...hey, I'm complete if nothing else).

I'm also fortunate to have some great work partners, especially Declan in Ireland, in addition to the folks that report to me. He's our conduit to the development centers and, as you can see, he has his own blog. Hmm, perhaps there will be some cross-posting activity.

So you may be wondering if you should expect any changes on my blog. And I'll tell you that nothing is being taken away. I'm still a US-based employee, I am still in staffing and I am still here to represent Microsoft broadly. One of the partner teams in my organization will still have some US focus and I am ALWAYS happy to get a resume into the right hands regardless of where those hands happen to sit (do hands sit? Yes, I think they do).

The additional content that I plan to be sharing is around my experience supporting the international space. So for my regular US audience, you can expect to hear about what I have got going on (some of which is still US program focused). For the international audience, I think you'll start to see opportunities to engage our dev center staffing teams. So seriously, no take-aways. If anything, just additional global goodness.

So this is what I have going on. And if you have any questions about our international recruiting (specific recruiting internationally for dev centers), flip 'em my way and we'll get Declan to hop online and answer them.

See why I am dorky for my job?

Comments

• Anonymous
  July 11, 2008
  I initially wrote "Good Luck!", but after following your blog for the past couple years it's clear that the only thing that would make you unsuccessful is you, and all the evidence points to your continued success. Congratulations on the new position. There is no doubt you will be awesome and the results along with you. It's amazing how far flung Microsoft is. Even to such remote international locations like Boston grin As an American overseas, I am pleased to see companies come out here and invest in our large talent pools. It makes our lives better, and we can in turn help you guys to be more profitable. I can't wait to see the new content.

• Anonymous
  July 11, 2008
  Congratulations! It's great to have a job you love.

• Anonymous
  July 11, 2008
  Thanks, you guys!

• Anonymous
  July 11, 2008
  Congratulations, Heather. It is nice when good things happen to hardworking people who deserve them!

• Anonymous
  July 11, 2008
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  July 12, 2008
  Thanks Lisa. Really, it's just more responsibility piled on :) But I am definitely looking forward to all the things I am going to learn. Larry- is that a trick question? I guess it would depend on what you think the problems are with Windows and Zune. I am not going to pretend like every product hits one out of the park, but if you met the product teams, I think you would be equally impressed with the quality of those people. They have even made me loves geeks. I think that may be an upcoming blog post. Anyway, I think it's super trendy to not like Microsoft. Be a free thinker, Larry. If you want to hate us, have a reason based on your personal experience :) Seriously, that is exactly why I do what I do here. That perception by the the "marketplace" (which in this case I am going to say is driven by the technology media) is inconsistent with my personal experience. I think that you are right that we don't do enough to market ourselves well. So it's not a question of our reason for being, because I think the % of PCs worldwide that run windows is a statistic that speaks for itself. It's a question of what we are doing as a company to tell our story. Since I am not in marketing, I don't have an answer. All I can tell you is that I am doing my little part here. And I do think you are bering antagonistic, but in a very polite way and I really do not mind at all! :)

• Anonymous
  July 12, 2008
  Antagonism - with a wink and a nod. John Livengood, Creative Director at DDB here in Seattle had some interesting thoughts on the perception of mac vs. pc users on his blog (I read waaay too many blogs - Blog is the new book ®2008 Larry Weiner!) here: http://www.ddbseattle.com/blogs/john_livengood/can_you_get_it_too_right.php

• Anonymous
  July 15, 2008
  The comment has been removed