A couple of quick comments and but first an apology–I misunderstood your “poaching” comment. We do not recruit from our partners–we have a definite corporate “hands-off” list.

One thing your analysis of the engineering candidate overlooked is that we are inviting a target audience to visit an Entertainment & Devices web page http://www.microsoft-entertainment-jobs.com/ . And that web page is clearly branded appropriately. From this vantage point that same perspective candidate could join our social networking communities http://www.microsoft-entertainment-jobs.com/join/. It is because of what your observations about your hypothetical candidate experience that we developed the hardware@microsoft profession.

if a prospective engineering candidate goes to the microsoft hardware home page (http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/), she sees mice and webcams – not Xbox.

Who can blame her then for scratching her head in wonderment as to why microsoft is doing mice instead of design specs? You have a sisyphean recruitment task to get her to think otherwise.

As for the poaching, please see my post http://www.staffingtalk.com/2009/07/how-to-source-hard-to-find-candidates.html

Gregg: I appreciate your perspective. I am a little confused by the “poaching” comment. Microsoft created the space for PC Hardware starting with the famous mouse 27 years ago. I am not certain where Xbox 360, Surface, or Sync encroaches on our “partners.”

Question: why is Microsoft messing with hardware? Seems like something Jim Collins would call a great thing to not do. Poaches on ‘partners’ who do it better. Bored executives in Redmond?