Buy Office 2007 blog get-out-there-to-get-noticed

Since Jim is on holiday this week, our buddy Glenn Gutmacher offered to fill in for him. Glenn works on our technical sourcing team, and I've often heard Jim describe Glenn as the "great one." In fact, Jim has posted about Glenn before. Anyway, here's Glenn, and Jim, I hope you have a fabulous vacation ... where ever you are!

Take it away, Glenn ...

I am a recruiting researcher at Microsoft. We work in a complementary way with the recruiters, conducting deep research to find those hard-to-find candidates that won’t necessarily apply for jobs at Microsoft on their own. Two JobsBlog posts this week inspired me to offer another perspective on the technical job-hunt process that may help you get noticed by people like us,Office Professional Plus, as well as the recruiters.

In a post earlier this week, Jenna explained that Microsoft recruiters often find our hires through non-traditional sources, particularly social networking portals like LinkedIn, etc. The day before, Gretchen asked how blogs have impacted your career choices. But realize that we do search blogs as well. If you consider yourself fairly expert in some niche of technology, or aspire to, and have something worthwhile to say about the things you discover,Office Home And Stude/nt 2010 Key, then please blog regularly and mention the hot products,Office Professional Plus, technologies, and names of sharp peers in the industry you know or follow. That helps you get on our radar.

Another place we like to look are the technical forums, lists, user groups and online manifestations of the professional industry associations related to key technologies we have recurring needs. We don’t limit ourselves to MSDN’s forums (though we like them, of course ;-) so don’t hesitate to participate in very narrow technology spaces. If it interests you, matters to you and has promise, we’ll discover it eventually and we’ll find you if you’re making intelligent posts there.

The same goes for the technology standards-making bodies, of which there are more today than ever. Since most of these are volunteer-run, they aren’t limited to just the luminaries in an industry. If you’ve got worthwhile comments, you should subscribe to their mailing lists, attend their meetings when they coincide with professional conferences in your field, and otherwise participate, even if you’re not the kind of person who’s going to publish a technical paper worthy of an industry journal. Again, if your intelligence comes through,Buy Office 2007, we’ll probably find you.

That reminds me of one last suggestion: Just because you aren’t crafting journal-level technical papers doesn’t mean you aren’t capable of assembling a decent guest article for an online trade magazine. Maybe it’s a code block representing a productive twist on already-existing procedures, applicable to a particular type of environment. Or just your interesting take on some news item or potential trend in the industry. Most of those zines never have enough content. You’ve probably even read some of those pieces and thought, “I could do better.” Well, you should. And now you’ve got another reason to do it: The more you get your name out there, the more likely you’ll be noticed. And not just by Microsoft recruiting.

Writing great code is one thing. Being known for your perspective on coding is another. No one’s first publishing effort is their best (I’m the first to admit that), but the more you do it, the better you get. And the more you pose and answer questions in online forums, and get involved in technical discussions by networking in circles that discuss new possibilities for your niche of the industry (whether they get adopted or not), the more incisive -- dare I say,Office 2007 Professional Key, smarter -- you’ll get. And that informs your subsequent writing that people like us researchers see.

See the self-reinforcing circle that’s developing? To give this a real try, you’ve got to break out of your comfort zone a bit, but I hope some of you will. And listing that kind of activity on your resume doesn't hurt, either.

Glenn