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In a highly competitive recruiting environment for talented and experienced employees in the technology and software businesses, Microsoft Corporation relies extensively on information to find, recruit, and hire the very best talent. See how Dow Jones Client Solutions empowered Microsoft’s Staffing Research & Competitive Intelligence with the information they needed to optimize recruitment.
Citation preview
Dow Jones Client Solutions Offers Three-Phased Approach
Van Dyke brought in Dow Jones Client Solutions to analyze external
content and delivery requirements for the Staffing Research &
Competitive Intelligence group at Microsoft. Dow Jones consultants
reviewed editorial content, analyzed workflow in the department,
investigated best practices for information delivery via the Micro-
soft SharePoint Web portal application, and developed a roadmap
for short-term objectives as well as long-term future needs. As a
preparation for the Dow Jones engagement, Van Dyke did a survey
of the Microsoft staffing organization. “We learned that they needed
two things – current staffing-related news on competitors and infor-
mation on the latest products from each competitor,” she says.
Dow Jones Client Solutions professionals worked with Van Dyke to
put forward a three-phased proposal to Microsoft executives. The
first two phases involved making better use of the existing content
within the SharePoint portal, and the third phase looked at how an
automated solution would benefit Microsoft staffing employees by
streamlining workflow.
A major aspect of the engagement was ensuring that Dow Jones
Client Solutions professionals had a complete picture of what the
Staffing Research & Competitive Intelligence group at Microsoft
does each day. “We work to understand how competitors position
their organizations so that we can compete,” Van Dyke says. “We
need to know about other high-tech companies like Amazon,Google
and Apple. How do they promote themselves to potential em-
ployees? What is their corporate culture? How do they describe
themselves? We interview people who are new hires at Microsoft
who came to us from other companies, and we also speak with
recruiters who provide information to us.”
Van Dyke says that the news they get from Factiva, plus other exter-
nal information from articles and Web sites, is critical. “The staffing
consultants and recruiters at Microsoft need to have good informa-
tion and data about our competitors when they talk to candidates,”
she says.
“ We analyze competitors, startups, graduate schools, and other places that we compete with for talent.”
Technology for Hire In the highly competitive recruiting environment for talented and
experienced employees in the technology and software businesses,
Microsoft Corp. relies extensively on information to find, recruit
and hire the very best talent. Ruth Van Dyke, Manager of Staffing
Research & Competitive Intelligence at Microsoft, is the individual
charged with arming the entire staffing department with the com-
petitive knowledge it needs to be effective. “I have a unique role in
that I’m doing a marketing job, but I’m doing it within the staffing de-
partment,” Van Dyke says. “We have an entire department that uses
marketing concepts to promote working at Microsoft to prospective
employees.”
Van Dyke says that most people within her team have a marketing
background and that allows them to act more like a product team
than an internal service organization. “We use competitive intel-
ligence to market employment in much the same way our product
marketers use competitive intelligence to market our products,” she
says. “We analyze competitors, startups, graduate schools, and
other places that we compete with for talent.”
“ One of the good things about working with Dow Jones Client Solutions is that they brought together an understanding of information delivery plus the information science approach to how information and news can help us here at Microsoft.”
According to Van Dyke, Microsoft invests heavily in making informa-
tion available across the entire organization. “I have a library science
background so when I joined Microsoft, I wanted to find out what
information was available. I immediately found that Factiva, from
Dow Jones, was available to all employees,” she says. “Towards the
end of 2006 we learned about new options available in SharePoint
2007 for working with content. Since Microsoft was already paying
for Factiva information and we were migrating to SharePoint 2007
for delivery, we were looking for a better way to deliver the informa-
tion that we already owned.”
Dow Jones Client Solutions Microsoft Case Study
“ Towards the end of 2006 we learned about new options available in SharePoint 2007 for working with content. Since Microsoft was already paying for Factiva information and we were migrating to SharePoint 2007 for delivery, we were looking for a better way to deliver the information that we already owned.”
About Dow Jones & Company
Dow Jones & Company (NYSE: DJ; dowjones.com) is a leading provider of
global business news and information services. Its Consumer Media Group
publishes The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, MarketWatch and the Far
Eastern Economic Review. Its Enterprise Media Group includes Dow Jones
Newswires, Factiva, Dow Jones Client Solutions, Dow Jones Indexes and
Dow Jones Financial Information Services. Its Local Media Group operates
community-based information franchises. Dow Jones is co-owner with
Hearst of SmartMoney. Dow Jones provides news content to CNBC and
radio stations in the U.S.
Dow Jones Client Solutions delivers end-to-end, technology-enabled
business solutions and innovative consulting services that help organizations
transform their information assets into competitive advantage. With access
to world-class content, cutting-edge technology and integration experts
worldwide, Client Solutions creates, deploys and manages solutions that
optimize the sales process, improve marketing intelligence, increase loyal,
value-driven online financial business, and solve complex information chal-
lenges. For more information about Dow Jones Client Solutions visit
www.dowjones.com/clientsolutions.
Integrating News and Information
During the engagement, the Dow Jones Client Solutions team
learned that the portal had limitations in user options and timely
delivery of current information. In addition, creating scorecards was
a time-consuming cut-and-paste operation. “The process of reading
news each day and creating the scorecards is very manual,” Van
Dyke says. “So I was looking for a better way to do it.” And for the
entire organization, the migration over to SharePoint 2007 was the
ideal opportunity to re-think the approach to information delivery.
The recommendations that Dow Jones Client Solutions made for
phase I and phase II have been implemented, including RSS and
automatic delivery of premium content required by the Microsoft
recruiters and staffing professionals. A key consideration for the Dow
Jones Client Solutions consultants was to quickly leverage the com-
pany’s investment in the Microsoft SharePoint portal technology.
The first two phases were up and running upon release of the new
SharePoint portal in early April. “It is alive and well and being used,”
says Van Dyke. “We are in the process of doing another survey to
find out what people think. The anecdotal feedback is that things
are going well, but I am eager to hear from the staffing consultants
again.”
Now Van Dyke is working to implement the phase III recommenda-
tions. “For example, we currently have the competitor scorecards
in MS Word, but we want to make the scorecards a real-time daily
update of a Web page instead,” she says. “The third phase has not
been implemented because it is difficult to find the right home for it
within Microsoft. We are working off the recommendations docu-
ment that Dow Jones gave us for phase III because it provided good
thinking and clarity to the process. This is useful because I found
it challenging to explain what needed to be done prior to thinking
the project through with Dow Jones. Now I have a way to work on
implementation with our internal IT partners.
About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) is the worldwide leader in
software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their
full potential.
Dow Jones Client Solutions Microsoft Case Study
©2008 Dow Jones and Company, Inc. All rights reserved. DJCS-3566
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