Heather's Bio

I am a marketing geek and I hope you don't mind that I am writing this is in the first person.

I started recruiting finance and accounting professionals in 1994 in Chicago...great city...very cold. After a few years, I realized that things don't change that much in accounting (GAAP gets reviewed what...evey 5 or 10 years?). So my goal was to get into technical recruiting.

I joined a “large-ish” tech consulting firm that focused on application development, application oursourcing and Y2K remediation. The year was 1997 and let's be honest....I hired mainframe programmers to ensure that the lights didn't turn off and your credit card still worked at midnight 12/31/99. Got my bearings in technology and moved along...

To the ever changing world of insurance! I joined a large, multi-line insurance company hiring tech folks for in-house application development positions. The company was just getting into eCommerce (I haven't heard that term in a while) and I was excited to lead the technical recruiting team. That's when Microsoft called.

I joined Microsoft in 1999. My first role was focused on hiring software developers, program managers and system engineers for Microsoft.com. Boy was I lucky...this group was great and I had so much fun staffing their teams. Big shout out to microsoft.com if any of you ever see this blog ; )

Then I was asked to focus on marketing positions. Product Manager, Marketing Managers, PR Managers, Advertising, Market Research, Partner Development, Business Development. For some reason, this space really resonated with me and I've become a bit of a subject-matter-expert on marketing staffing at Microsoft. I've supported our Central Marketing Group (Advertising and Events, Market Research, Branding, PR), Audience and Segment Marketing organizations (IT Pro, Enterprise) and Product Management and Business Development (Windows, Embedded, MSN, Platform Strategy).

My next role was to find excellent marketing talent for positions across Microsoft, regardless of the business group. I can help great marketers find the right role at Microsoft. I'm looking for new ways to reach out to the tech marketing population, evaluate who are the best and get them here. If you have recommendations on where I should be looking for the “best of the best“ in marketing, let me know! 

 Here is my current "bio":

Heather Hamilton manages Microsoft’s Global Central Sourcing Team responsible for competitive research and programs. In this role, she leads Microsoft’s efforts aimed at enabling global research centers to monitor the competitive talent landscape and leverage opportunities to recruit the best technical talent through deliverables such as lead generation, competitive intelligence, training and opportunisticrecruiting programs. Aside from managing a talented team of staffing professionals, Heather is probably best known as a blogger. She is a requested speaker on topics related to candidate outreach and community building and her blog, One Louder, has resulted in significant press interest including The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and Fast Company.

Heather has worked in the staffing industry since 1994 and has been with Microsoft since 1999 in a variety of staffing roles. Prior to joining Microsoft, she worked in finance and technical recruiting. Heather graduated With a BS in Business Administration from the University of Southern California as a member of one of the nation’s top-rated entrepreneur programs. Heather is an enthusiastic college football fan (Go Trojans!) and spends her free time reading, gardening or at the gym. Heather lives outside Seattle with her dog.

She does know why a manhole cover is round but she cannot help you fix your computer.

PS: for anyone who cares or needs proof that I am a real person, here's my photo.