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I’m sorry I won’t recommend you for a Product Management position, but…
I am a senior product manager at Microsoft and I’m quite active on LinkedIn, YouTube, and here on medium. Thus, I often find myself in a situation where I’m being asked to recommend someone for a Product position at Microsoft. It’s always a bit of a heartbreaking moment when I need to deny such a request. However, truth be told, you don’t want my recommendation! Here are the reasons why:
It simply doesn’t give you an advantage
People live in a false impression that being recommended means you are ahead of the queue and are more likely to get a job. For many companies, including the biggest ones like Microsoft, this is simply not true. All the workforce should be interested in having the best candidate win regardless of the candidate's race, gender, age, and personal connections. I do realize you don’t want to take an unfair advantage just because you’re asking for a recommendation! However, if I agreed to that, it would lead eventually to a rigged game recruitment process. I acknowledge that landing a new job is hard and you are trying every trick in the book to make this happen for you.
I really can’t blame you.
However, asking for recommendations is simply not the right way.
