Recruitment Challenges Faced at Microsoft
Discuss about the Microsoft for Recruitment Challenges and Strategies.
Microsoft, an American technological giant, was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in the year 1975. The headquarter of company is in Redmond, Washington. The company is in the business of manufacturing, developing, selling, licensing the computers, software, services, and personal electronics (“Microsoft”, 2017).
This report will discuss the main challenges faced by Microsoft in recruiting the workforce. After that the strategies to overcome these challenges are discussed.
The talented engineers are always in demand and the expectation is that this demand will further increase with time and advancement in technology (Kuvaas & Dysvik, 2010).
To work in Microsoft is the dream of most of the engineers. When they apply to work in Microsoft, they have many expectations. The following are the factors that they consider about:
- They will get a good package.
- The working environment should be good.
- Good scope for development career wise.
- The ideas or innovations by them should be utilized by the organization.
The company is cash rich and other companies in this industry such as Google, Facebook are also cash rich and none of them have any problem in giving higher packages (Pilbeam & Corbridge, 2010). The problem comes in finding right people for the right work. The main challenges faced by Microsoft in recruiting engineers are described below:
Microsoft is a company that is continuously developing, innovating, and delivering according to the requirements of consumers. An ordinary engineer can not match these objectives and goals of the company, so the engineers who can be creative are required. Mostly all the big companies from the tech sector hire from the best universities (Rodriguez & Patel, 2012) because they have different type of engineering programs that are designed specifically to make great engineers. The extraordinary skills such as artificial intelligence, data mining, etc are needed by Microsoft and it is difficult to find engineers with these skills and the same objective as that of Microsoft. Besides skills, to find an experienced engineer is also a big concern. The experienced candidate will learn and develop fast in the organization as compared to freshers (Bartlett, Horwitz, Ipe, & Liu, 2005).
With time, Microsoft has grown old and with the employees also turning old the company has the reason to hire new young persons. The workers are having issues with the review system which according to them is unfair. The issues occur between senior ranked engineers and those from lower grade. The complaints are directed towards the reward system that the rewards are now provided based on the office politics and not on the performance of the employee (Cantrell, 2006). This is an area where Microsoft is struggling. The workers have formed different unions and protest these issues of rewards. One of the problem with workers that almost every tech company faces in this industry is dependency on contract workers. They rely on them for regular tasks, projects, graphic design, software testing and customer support. These workers raise the maximum issues.
Requirement of Specific Skills
With maturity, Microsoft is also struggling to maintain their image of “cool place to work”. The effect of these issues is also reflected in price of Microsoft’s stock. With time and performance, the price should rise steadily but it has slowed the returns for investors despite earning good profits.
The maximum number of engineers that work in Microsoft are growing old. The new generation is not that interested in making a career as an engineer. They are more focusing on e-commerce, media, etc. as an option for career. The job of a tech engineer is not that attractive to students and they are going for other options.
At present, the generation gap can be easily identified as the company have employees both from the younger generation as well as 15-20 years older to them. This is good for the organization because the viewpoints from both the generations are available for analysis. But, on the other hand, this diversity at workplace also brings challenges for the organization as it is not known how this mix will affect the performance of employees in accordance to the objectives and goals of the company.
While recruiting, Microsoft also faces cultural challenges. The company is multinational and the hired workforce is also from the whole world. When various people from various cultures work under a same roof, cultural differences occur. Microsoft is facing these cultural issues at present. One of the employee is from America, one from India, others from China, Australia, etc. and they all work on a same project but because of cultural differences, issues occur and it ultimately affects the objectives of the company.
Microsoft is facing so many recruitment challenges and it has become necessary for it to overcome them. It is time to be proactive rather than be reactive. If the company has to maintain its top position, then the best people should be hired and to recruit them the company should follow following strategies:
An individual should not study just for getting degree but the aim should be to gain wide knowledge of the subject that will help in securing a job (Van der Velden & Humburg, 2014). There might be some candidates who have the required degree but not skills and there might be some who have skills but not the degree. The focus should be to find those who are educationally qualified as well as have the required skills. Internship will provide an opportunity to find such category of candidates as during internship, the skills of candidate can be observed in a better way and if found eligible the candidate may get an offer to work in the company.
Labour Issues and Organization’s Image
To get the best talent in the industry, Microsoft can make a deal with head-hunters. The recruitment process can be outsourced to get the best people from the market. According to the survey done 59% of the companies use outsourced recruiting processes (Bartlett & Ghoshal, 2013). This will prove to be beneficial for Microsoft because the best talent will be hired from the market and without spending much. The cost of inhouse recruitment is more as compared to the hiring done by recruiting agencies or head-hunters.
Social media recruitment means hiring a candidate by using data about candidate from various social networking sites and blogs. Microsoft being a tech company can easily utilize this system for its benefit. The cost and time will be saved as compared to the organized process of hiring. When all the members of LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter are combined, they will come to more than 535 million. That means a lot of potential talent can be found from these platforms (Black, n.d.).
Directly picking the required talented workforce from the campus can be the best option for organizations of tech sector (Good & Farley, 2015). Here, the objective of Microsoft is to pick best talent available. The college graduates provide an opportunity as the students have innovative ideas, skills that are required by the company. The candidates will be provided a training after the recruitment and this whole process will lower the expenditure of company as compared to other methods of hiring. In this way ROI will be better and these employees have tendency to stay for a longer time (Ordanini & Silvestri, 2008). One other benefit that Microsoft will get is cost. When the students are hired directly from the campus, they can be recruited at a much lower price as compared to others with experience. The recruited candidates from the campus can be easily trained about the objectives and goals of the company.
A good referral system is necessary for Microsoft. The referral scheme will motivate the existing employees to search for talent in their friend circle, social circle, community, and family (Clardy, 2008). These employees will work as recruiting agents for Microsoft and in this case also the cost of recruitment to company will be less and required candidate will be hired without much efforts. The workers should get a good referral bonus for getting the best talented and skilful persons from the market.
Demographic Issues
The branding of Microsoft should be done in such a way that every tech graduate shows enthusiasm to get a job at Microsoft. The proper research should be done describing how to present Microsoft as a best recruiter in tech industry. This involves the qualities of company and the package or facilities it will provide to employees. Besides hiring and retaining best talent, the main aim of employer branding is to accelerate the business growth and achievement of strategic business objectives and goals (Mossevelde, 2014).
Advertising for recruitments is basically a strategy of the company to get the best talent from the market that will be beneficial for the company. Microsoft can use several different types of advertising campaigns that will reach the right type of candidate for the job. The goal of the company should be to communicate with the right type of individual. The various mediums that can be used in effort to reach individuals can be placing ads in business publications, different websites like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter. The cost that is required to post recruitment advertisements on websites like LinkedIn and Facebook won’t affect the company much. Moreover, the information about the candidate that is recovered from these sites is much more than the resumes they provide. The use of online banner ads on technical websites will also be fruitful for Microsoft. Only those websites should be selected that have the right set of viewers with the skills and qualifications matching Microsoft. This recruitment advertising targeted to a specific group of people, can bring extraordinary results in the form of individuals with the skills and expertise necessary for the position (“What Are the Different Types of Recruitment Advertising?”, 2017).
Conclusion
Microsoft provides best opportunity for engineers to get the best in technology sector. The working environment is suitable for the career development of an individual. There is opportunity for the young generation because of the demographic factors such as ageing of employees already working in the company. The company is facing various challenges in recruiting the correct work force. For this, it is recommended that the company should build strategies such as hiring skilful candidates from the campus, referral system will also encourage the employees to bring the best talent from the market to Microsoft. It is also recommended that various mediums should be chosen for recruitment such as online, outsourcing to recruiting agencies/head-hunters, campus placements, social media, etc.
References
Bartlett, C., & Ghoshal, S. (2013). Building competitive advantage through people. Sloan Mgmt. Rev, 43(2).
Bartlett, K., Horwitz, S., Ipe, M., & Liu, Y. (2005). The Perceived Influence of Industry-Sponsored Credentials on the Recruitment Process in the Information Technology Industry: Employer and Employee Perspectives. Journal Of Career And Technical Education, 21(2). https://dx.doi.org/10.21061/jcte.v21i2.661
Black, T. How to Use Social Media as a Recruiting Tool. Inc.com. Retrieved 30 May 2017, from https://www.inc.com/guides/2010/04/social-media-recruiting.html
Cantrell, A. (2006). Microsoft labor woes another issue for the software giant – Mar. 14, 2006. Money.cnn.com. Retrieved 30 May 2017, from https://money.cnn.com/2006/03/13/technology/microsoft_employees/
Clardy, A 2008, ” The strategic role of Human Resource Develpment in managing core competencie”, Human Resource Development International, 11(2), pp. 183-197
Good, T.; Farley, C.; Tambe, H. and Cantrell, S. (2015) Trends Reshaping the Future of HR https://www.accenture.com/SiteCollectionDocuments/PDF/Accenture-Future-of-HR-Digital-Radically-Disrupts-HR.pdf (Accessed 30 May 2017)
Mossevelde, C. (2014). What Is Employer Branding? | Universum Global. Universum Global. Retrieved 30 May 2017, from https://universumglobal.com/articles/2014/03/what-is-employer-branding/
Microsoft. (2017). En.wikipedia.org. Retrieved 29 May 2017, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft
Kuvaas, B. & Dysvik, A. (2010) ‘Does best practice HRM only work for intrinsically motivated employees?’. International Journal Of Human Resource Management, 21 (13), pp. 2339-2357
Ordanini, A, & Silvestri, G 2008, ‘Recruitment and selection services: Efficiency and competitive reasons in the outsourcing of HR practices’, International Journal Of Human Resource Management, 19, 2, pp. 372-391
Pilbeam, S. & Corbridge, M. (2010) People resourcing and talent planning: HRM in practice. 4th ed. London: Prentice Hall International.
Rodriguez, D, Patel, R, Bright, A, Gregory, D, & Gowing, M (2012) “Developing Competency Models to Promote Integrated Human Resource Practices”, Human Resource Management, 41(3), p. 309, Business Source
Van der Velden, R., & Humburg, M. (2014). Skills and the graduate recruitment process: Evidence from two discrete choice experiments (No. 002). Maastricht University, Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market (ROA).
What Are the Different Types of Recruitment Advertising?. (2017). wiseGEEK. Retrieved 30 May 2017, from https://www.wisegeek.com/what-are-the-different-types-of-recruitment-advertising.htm
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