Types of people we look for in marketing and finance

Lately, I've been doing a lot of work to help further define what we are looking for in the marketing and finance spaces. Specifically, I'm working to define the "big buckets" of candidates we try to attract, not the kinds of roles that we hire them into. For example, we hire many strategy consultants. They can go into product strategy roles, business development, operational roles, etc. My work is to find them, wherever they are. Once we know who they are, then we try and match them up. This approach is effective because for any one type of role at Microsoft, a number of different candidate profiles could fit. These will all fluctuate as out business needs change. We have some major profile categories that we feel, together, make up about 80% of what we hire for. We have some smaller buckets that we hire for less, but still think they are significant enough to mention. This is not comprehensive, so it's quite possible that you won't see something here that sounds like you and we would still be interested in speaking with you. Anyway, here are our profiles...

Marketing

Top profiles:

Management consulting (in a marketing or high tech practice, ideally)

Inbound technology product management in enterprise and/or small/medium space

Outbound technology product marketing in enterprise and/or small/medium space

Partner management and strategy (working with ISVs, SIs, OEMs, other channel partners)

Strategic Alliance (build-buy-license strategy and deal execution)

Consumer marketing (inbound or outbound)

 

Additional marketing profiles:

Brand                                                      Pricing/Licensing

Public and analyst relations                       Advertising

Packaging                                                Market Research

Events Management                                 Direct/Database/Customer Relationship Marketing

Partner Marketing                                    Consumer packaged goods

Training/eLearning                                    Emerging Markets

Content and editorial                                 Evangelism

 

Finance

Top profiles:

Financial Analysis

Management/strategy/business consulting

Audit

Accounting/Controllership

 

Additional Finance Profiles:

Business and Reporting Analysis               Forensic

Treasury                                                   Tax

IT Audit                                                   Risk

Venture Capital/Investment Banking   

 

I realize that a lot of these profiles cross over. This is just how we are going to be thinking about these profiles as we reach out to people (assuming that many audit people belong to similar professional organizations and are networked for example).

Hopefully this will help answer some of those questions about the types of people we look for. I'll continue to add more detail on some of these profiles over time (and as I learn more about the finance space). If you have questions about the profiles or the kind of hiring we do, feel free to ask!