As promised, I'm producing a two-part publish in regards to the H1B visa issue and Vancouver Improvement Centre choice. In this post, I will explain what is going on inside Microsoft. And in the next one, I’ll let you know what to expect going forward. Up until now, I have had blind faith in the massive Microsoft legal team and the process of obtaining visas. In the 9 years that I have worked here, I have never personally seen someone’s offer revoked due to lack of sponsorship. So, when the H1B cap came this year and we had impacted new hires, it came as a surprise to me. I had seen the news and read the facts beforehand, and therefore, knew the impending risk of the situation. But, based on my past history and naivety, I thought it would just all work out fine. However, soon there was a collective feeling of uncertainly and confusion inside Microsoft Staffing, as most of us (including me) said, “what are we going to do now?”. In defense of Microsoft, several people had been working on this issue long before the cap was reached. But, now instead of it just being a possible threat - it was reality- and those teams went into action. However, the people on the forefront of the problem (the new hires and the recruiters) had the least information of all. Why? Well, in this process we have several communication points. We have the U.S. government (who we were waiting on for rejection/acceptance notices) and we have our internal and external legal teams who had managed the process. A lot of the Microsoft visa process is outsourced. So the communication about what was happening, was like a giant game of telephone: the U.S. government communicated for the external legal team - then the external legal team communicated to Microsoft legal - then Microsoft legal communicated to Staffing - and Staffing communicated to your individual recruiter - who, finally, communicated on the candidate. In some instances, we got the information quickly. But in other instances,
Microsoft Office Professional 2007, it was very, very slow. The trickiest component, is that we also weren’t sure what to say. We knew that without visa sponsorship we could not employ you in the U.S., but this brought a host of other questions: Can you work remotely? If your country of origin does not have a Microsoft office,
Microsoft Office Professional 2010, can you work from home? What if we have already relocated you to the U.S., do we have to send you back? Do we let individual teams determine how to handle this, or will we have a unilateral decision from Microsoft? And, on and on… Fairly quickly,
Microsoft Office 2010 Professional, we mobilized on Vancouver. Recruiters knew all along this was an option, but we did not mention this until it was final. In the last few weeks, I have questioned if that was the right decision. I have settled on “yes”. There was so much uncertainty, that it would have been unfair to mention this possiblity and give some people false hope, if we were unable to deliver. So,
Microsoft Office 2007 Enterprise, we gave a fairly bland and frustrating answer: "we are evaluating options, but currently,
Microsoft Office 2010 Professional Plus, you do not have valid work sponsorship”. I feel badly the way this has happened, but I struggle on how it could have gone differently. While I know regular communication would have helped - how helpful is it if you don’t have any answers? I’m not sure. But regardless, I now have an offer for you. If you are someone who accepted a Microsoft offer, but did not receive an H1B visa, you can email me: jennah-at-microsoft-dot-com with your full name and your questions, and I will answer you personally. I will also email you my phone number if you prefer to talk about it by phone. If you are not a presently impacted H1B candidate (someone who accepted an offer, but did not get a visa), I won’t reply. So, please no trickery. In my next publish, I will cover what has happened between our announcement and now, and what you can expect going forward. -Jenna
Microsoft Office 2010 Professional blog all-about-
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