Introduction
The human resources are one of the most important earnests of any company’s success. The labor market nowadays is highly volatile, so it reacts to the demands of economy immediately. The potential employees usually try to broaden their knowledge and skills in order to be competitive at the labor market and get the best possible job with a sufficient level of salary and career opportunities. Whenever a company performs an interview with a candidate for one or another vacancy, it determines its future to an extent, because technologically the production process may be perfect, but it is human resources that bring innovations, enthusiasm and efficiency into it. This is why
I have picked the Microsoft Corporation as the object of research because it has a specific mode of work and a large number of workers, which makes it a significant participant of the labor market. To perform more precise analysis I concentrated on the main office of the Corporation and the features of local labor market.
Microsoft Corporation: Main Facts
The Microsoft Corporation was founded in the 1975 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Today it is headquartered in the Microsoft Redmond Campus, which is situated in Redmond, Washington. The Corporation owns 646 sites, the majority of which are leased (2012). The Microsoft Corporation has its subsidiaries in most countries in the world and is considered to be one of the most successful corporations that provide computing goods and services.
The Characteristics of the Local Labor Market
As I mentioned previously, the Microsoft Corporation is situated in Redmond, where it moved in 1986. Many workers live there, so the Corporation has a significant positive impact upon the economy of the city as a whole. According to the CNNMoney list of best small cities (2012), Redmond is the fifth best place to live. The population of the town is 55,200.
However, the labor market where the Microsoft Corporation participates is not limited only by its hometown. For better research I have also analyzed the population and demographics of the population of the Washington state as a whole, the data according to the Department of Labour. The overall labor force of Washington is 3,497.1 thousands, the rate of unemployment is 8,6 % (August 2012). The US sex ratio shows that the number of women is slightly higher than the number of men in the category of people aged 15-64 (July 2012).
The level of education of the Washington population is similar to the overall US numbers: almost 99 % of population is literate,
The Microsoft Corporation has quite high requirements to the level of education and knowledge of the potential employees. It is explained by the complicated operations that are supposed to be performed by the workers, an ability to work in a large team, innovativeness and creativity, and, which is also very important, responsibility. The official data about the Corporations proves that the majority of workers are men – 76.3 %, while women - 23.7 %. The overall quantity of workers in the Washington state is 40,854 (94,290 in …