The importance of good HR

John
Porcaro
has an interesting insight about the importance of good recruiting.
When I was looking for a new job last (6 years ago), I sent a number of unsolicited
resumes, and contacted two friends in companies, at Intel and Microsoft. I never
got a response from any of the unsolicited resumes, but the friend at Microsoft talked
to someone, and the short version is that I interviewed about 4 days after I first
had any inkling of going to work for Microsoft. I was offered a job 2 days later,
and I accepted about a week later. Literally minutes after I got off the phone
accepting with Microsoft, I got my first call from someone at Intel with what
sounded like exactly the job I had intended to find when I sent my resume to a colleague
at Intel 2 months earlier. If they had their act together and had contacted
me even an hour earlier in those 2 months, there is a good chance I would have gone
there.