Microsoft's latest career recruiting website (viewmyworld.com) is a unique perspective to working within a huge corporation. The site displays blogs and information about Microsoft employees along with blogs, questions and answers, as well as a job search.

Site Review

The first thing that struck me about Microsoft’s career opportunities website is that it doesn’t look like a creation from Microsoft nor does it look like a recruitment website. I liked the overall approach. The main page reveals a group of Microsoft employees and each is holding a digital picture of their department. The Xbox tester is an alternative looking women with black hair and well maintained and professional looking pink strips. I have to tip my geek hat to MS for displaying women who illustrate that women do indeed play video games. In contrast I was disappointed to see a predominantly young group of headliners.

What is interesting is that games, music, graphics and Windows Mobile get the media spotlight for the Microsoft career opportunities website which is called View . View is a Flash-based site using video clips, links to blogs and RSS feeds to show off the up-and-coming opportunities at the company.

Because Angela has the same color strips as myself and is a geek gurl I clicked on Angela the Xbox Tester. Angela is a serious gamer with an Atari logo tattoo, a game score of 40,000 and an identity all of her own. Her View bio was genuine and truthful with a ‘don't think your going to slack off here’ attitude.

I checked out the rest of the headlining stars but Angela’s was the best and made a geek gurl proud. The View bios is a refreshing new approach to recruiting new talent by show casing their individual personalities and real world work environment.

There was one environment element I didn’t like and I don’t know what the Microsoft advertising team was thinking. Maybe they were trying to bring back some of the golden era of Microsoft office fun… but the attempt at humor with Roy the Job Opportunity (singing) Cowboy is more confused mystery than humorous amusement. In a metropolitan area where games and city slicker trends rule and you can’t find a real ranch within a fifty-mile radius, I think they should have gone more for the Arbiter the Job Opportunity (singing) Halo Soldier. Thankfully the singing cowboy is not a Microsoft employee.

Overall the new View career opportunities website is pretty eye candy with substance that provides a glimpse into the Microsoft world. But it’s interesting table talk to consider the fact that Microsoft is promoting jobs in its primarily money-losing divisions in contrast to their more profitable Windows, Office and Servers divisions. In early 2007, Microsoft’s Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie said he believed that the most interesting innovations in technology would be consumer market based -- but will interesting shoot sales into profitable?

References

• ZD Net
  
• View <My World>