Core Job Competencies

Microsoft's Channel Chief Talks Cloud, the MPN Switch and More

In-Depth

In an exclusive interview with RCP, Jon Roskill, Microsoft's top channel executive, talks about the challenges of his first year -- the cloud transition, the MPN switchover -- and the huge opportunities he sees for partners in year two.

Since Jon Roskill took over the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Group (WPG) in late June 2010, he's faced a set of three interlocking challenges.

On the one hand, he was tasked with delivering the message to partners that Microsoft was "all in" with the cloud and trying to accelerate the movement of the Microsoft channel toward Microsoft cloud products.

Next, he inherited the massive, programmatic evolution from the Microsoft Partner Program to the Microsoft Partner Network (MPN). While his predecessor of eight years, Allison Watson, had overseen the design and a lot of the pitching of the MPN to Microsoft's 600,000-partner channel, it fell to Roskill to flip the switch on the largest part of the MPN launch on Nov. 1 and to shepherd Microsoft's huge partner community from the old system to the new.

Finally, the MPN was in the midst of a major overhaul of its partner incentives program throughout the Microsoft fiscal year that just ended.

All of that occurred against the backdrop of partners wondering more seriously than they have in years whether Microsoft was up to the competitive challenges in the cloud and around the consumerization of IT, as media tablets and smartphones get more important every day. Questions from Microsoft partners about whether they're betting on the right horse when they commit to Redmond have been louder than ever.

"The feedback I was getting from partners back in the January-February time frame as they were going through this, was, 'You're making us go through a lot here.' Yeah, we are."

"I think we've continued as a company to make moves that I believe are perceived as
Jon Roskill

Asked early last month if he knew what he was getting into a year ago, Roskill was unequivocal: "Yeah, I did." The answer would hardly be a surprise to the many partners who have talked to Roskill in his first year as corporate vice president of the WPG. His standard conversational gambit is to ask what you want to talk about, listen carefully, answer questions directly and still manage to get across all the things he wants to say. He's not a person who gets knocked off balance easily.

Five Pragmatic Things You Can Do to Make Sure ... - Job Searching Tips

1. Target Job Title. A resume cannot be all things to all people. It needs to focus on a specific job and carry a target job title, coming right after contact information ( 80% of resumes lack this and start instead with a Job Objective); your email address should be hyperlinked. Recruiters use the target job title in database searches and using one helps your resume be pulled for review by a hiring manager, and the title then gives the hiring manager an immediate focus.

2. Sell to the customer’s needs: Don’t sell what you think are your strong points in a resume, find out what the customers (hiring manager) want to buy. Do a Target Job Deconstruction (TJD) on 6 job postings to determine how employers prioritize their needs, and the words they use to describe them. Recruiters search resume databases using the approved job title and the words used in the job description. By doing TJD you know what skills employers value in this job, how they prioritize them and the words they are likely to use in database searches: in short you have a template for the story your resume must tell.

3. Replace Job/Career Objective (no one cares what you want), with Performance Profile. Managers do performance reviews on all employees every year so the phrase has immediacy and relevance. Beneath the heading address the heart of what you do in your professional work: Take the first 4-5 priorities from your TJD and turn them into short sentences running no more than five lines.

4. Core Competencies. Follow the Performance Profile with a Core Competency section. This contains all the words and phrases that were used in the job postings to describe your work (example: A/P, A/R, Quarterly P&L). List all the words and phrases that apply to you in columns; then repeat the words in the context of each of the jobs where they were applied, this way you get to use keywords that will be used by recruiters as search terms at least once and possibly two or three times; this will improve your database ranking. A hiring manager will read Core Competency section as headlines for all the skills you can talk about.

5. Together, a Target Job title, Target Job Deconstruction, Performance Profile and Core Competency section pack all the information into the first half page of your resume, to improve its database performance and to tell any recruiter or hiring manager of your ability and suitability for the job. This opening to a resume tells any reader you can do the job and you “get” what is truly important.

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