My take on options

Our marketing team has a new employment branding campaign that I really like. They have different ads around the same core theme in different places. Of course, the one that appeals to me is the one on our college recruiting website. What can I say, I am a dog person. Either that or I need to grow up...you decide. Could be both.

 

So you will see the theme also on our MBA site. I like that it uses actual Microsoft employees; one of my soapbox issues for a while now. We are better than stock photography or corporate models. I'm pretty sure the dog is a model though. Just a guess...I can't find him in the address book.  It will be fun to see this campaign roll out to other places. I hope we see it on our corporate careers page.

The focus of the campaign, as you can see is the choices available to Microsoft employees in driving their careers. When I have spoken to employees about our employment brand, it's been interesting to note the differences in asking a new employee "Why did you choose Microsoft?" and asking a tenured employee "Why do you stay at Microsoft?". There is definitely some cross-over but there are things that you come to really appreciate as an employee that you didn't expect. I think the theme of choices resonates well with tenured as well as new (or potential) employees. You have choices to make coming in (have you seen the listings on our careers site?) and you have choices to make when you get here. Specifically in marketing, when you talk to a long time employee and ask them about what they have done at Microsoft, you'll generally hear a number of different roles in different groups. Microsoft as a company appreciates a well-rounded individual. For the individual employee, the benefit is the ability to round out your skill set and not get bored doing the same thing.

I've had choices in my history though my path here could be thought of as linear. My passions are the candidate experience, candidate generation, candidate engagement. So I have been able to find (or in some situations craft) roles where I can focus on on those things rather than running interview days. That ability to work in my passion zone has been what has kept me interested, engaged and productive. I suspect that I would struggle personally if I were still running interview days and negotiating offers (and boy do I appreciate our Staffing partners that handle that piece so we can concentrate on what we are good at). So yeah, I have always been in Staffing (it's my thing) and maybe someday I'll try something else (maybe marketing, maybe not) but I've still had the benefit of making career choices here.

So what do you guys think of the campaign? How important are options/choices in making a career decision? Is that something that you are thinking of in deciding on a new position? And if you were the dog, which would you choose?