Encouraging Diversity - Women Students from Engg. Colleges: Interested in joining Microsoft?

Microsoft India is going to be conducting an All India Selection Test for women engineers who are completing their courses in year 2008. You have to be from Comp. Science/IT/Information Sciences discipline and completing a recognised BE/B.Tech/ME/M.Tech course.

Students interested in appearing for this test will have to submit their resumes at www.merittrac.net/microsoft  with the last date of receiving the application being 1st March 08. This test is being conducted on Saturday 8th March 08  that coincides with the International Women’s Day across eleven test centers across India. More information on test centers, schedules, contact details for are also available at the above link.

However, just clearing the test doesn't get you the Microsoft job. The students clearing this test will go thru the various levels of interviews before being made the offer to join Microsoft.

This effort is a part of the diversity campaign within Microsoft. I think this is an "excellent" effort to encourage more diversity within the organisation. However i do think that there are few things that MS may also want to ponder over:

  1. Does diversity mean women only? IMHO, diversity means people from all walks of life and that may include people with special abilities and needs e.g. handicapped people in terms of mobility, vision, hearing.. Diversity also means people from poorer section of society. It may also mean people from the "hijra" community who are generally ostracized from the community. I haven't heard of these people whenever i hear of diversity in here!
  2. Parity of salary levels between new hires and existing employees. Not being from HR, I can only rely on unofficial sources and they tell me that compensation parity doesn't exist between new hires and existing employees. Since MS policies don't allow sharing of compensation data or it being made public, this one is a difficult one to be specific about. However, i know that organisations go to great lengths to ensure this and wonder if MS India thinks of this at all?
  3. I have often heard from MS recruiters on how irrelevant it is that a person comes from a specific educational background. you can find employees in MS from diverse backgrounds as well.. How come this initiative is only limited to engg students then? How about bright girls from B.Sc., MCA & other disciplines?

MS India benefits from the global learnings and the time it has been in business. I sincerely believe that this is a great beginning to encourage diversity within MS. There are hardly any other companies in India who specifically have such initiatives.

MS policies on the whole are very intelligent and I hope that in future MS will think about the above points as well. i know that it is easy to preach than practice but this will genuinely take the diversity in MS to the next level.

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Comments

RK said…
Excellent initiative by MS. I wish this was advertised more prominently so that it reaches out to the most deserving.

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