Highly motivated HR professional offering more than 15 years’ experience in managing the recruiting life-cycle, 6 years’ experience leading recruiting teams, & over 10 years’ experience of people managing outside of recruiting. Entrepreneurial thinker with outstanding record of achievement for implementing new strategies, recruiting process, and delivering on comprehensive sourcing strategies to find niche candidates within limited talent pools My current focus is on Software Technology Executives with proven experience leading Distributed Computing, Networking (SDN & CDN), Security, Enterprise Application Development, Product Engineering & Development. I also own executive level design recruiting across the entire company. Think Executive Creative Directors and Design Leaders for hardware and software interaction. If you're looking for a job at Microsoft, before contacting me, please read my article titled "Think like a Recruiter, 5 Tips to Help Your Job Search using LinkedIn" Follow me on Twitter at @chrisbrecruits Specialties: Executive Search, Direct Sourcing, Global Sourcing & Recruiting, Technical Recruiting, Recruiting Strategy Development and Execution. Certified Diversity Recruiter (CDR)

Senior Executive Recruiter @ After 4 years in the Retail Business Division, I’m back home in Global Executive Talent Acquisition supporting work across all of Microsoft. Making executive connections with the industry's top talent is what my role’s all about. On a daily basis, I develop search and (sourcing) pipeline strategy, perform project work, conduct primary and secondary research and examine competitive intelligence to inform our searches. The best part about my role is that it allows me to constantly be in learning mode. From March 2014 to Present (1 year 10 months) Senior Staffing Manager, Retail Stores Division @ As the Retail Stores Business expanded, I made a decision to move back into a pure staffing role. I joined the team when we had 31 employees and 2 stores and left when we had >2500 employees and about 100 stores. My scope encompassed managing a team of recruiters around talent acquisition, HR projects and programs. I built a complete talent acquisition strategy that encompassed social media, diversity, operations, and branding for the field and corporate hiring that aligned to the business' objectives. A significant part of my role was building scalable processes that supported our business growth. During this time, I still owed pieces of the HRBP function that were closely aligned to talent mgmt. One of the programs I’m most proud of was our retail Stores to Corp college program called “Store to MACH” (Microsoft Academy of College Hires). MACH was a college program that exist in other parts of the company but not in Retail. I was charged with integrating the MACH program into the Retail Store Division as a mechanism to move talent from our stores into the corporate environment. Historically MACH talent would come from the top colleges versus the internal employee talent pool. Which in this case, internal talent that came from our Retail Stores. I had many learning's working in the retail start-up division. One of my biggest learning's was inspired from this quote “grow where you‘re planted”. Sometimes you may end up in a situation that isn't quite ideal and not how you would've scripted it. However, learning to persevere and adapt to your environment will help you see the opportunities available for you to make the greatest impact. From April 2011 to March 2014 (3 years) HR Business Partner/Lead Field Recruiter for MS Retail Stores @ I moved into an HR Business Partner & Recruiting role with The Retail Stores team to expand my experience. My feeling was that an HRBP perspective would be valuable to me as a recruiter. This was a start-up group within Microsoft, which meant a super-fast pace environment that lacked scalable processes. I arrived shortly after the first 2 stores were launched and was immediately focused on staffing up stores 3, 4, & 5. At the same time, running the annual review process for the corporate employees and leading the corporate staffing function. My role supported many work streams that spanned the HR Function & recruiting. I found myself drinking from a fire hose once again. My biggest learning during this period was that I really love recruiting and it’s what I’m most passionate about. Another learning would be that discipline changes can be very rewarding, but they require a lot of hard work to learn the discipline. It also requires the ability to synthesize data quickly, all while actually performing the job. From March 2010 to March 2011 (1 year 1 month) Executive Recruiter, Strategic Recruiting Team @ Working out of the office of the CTO recruiting the industry’s top technical talent was a great gig. Relationship based recruiting had always been my style so this role aligned very well. My role focused on recruiting industry luminaries. The luminaries that create technical domains and have visions that drive change throughout the world through their innovations. We saw ourselves as change agents for the company. Meaning we stayed on top of the new trends, emerging leaders & technologies, and the direction certain industries were going. This allowed us to create opportunistic hiring opportunities in areas that Microsoft was not thinking about and/or needed to be in. After nearly 3 years, I decided to move into a line HR role as a HR Business Partner to add another dimension to my work experiences. My biggest learning while on the Executive Recruiting team was that sometimes you may not get the outcome you want on a search (Hire! Hire! Hire!). However, find a way to celebrate the successes and learnings that happen along the way. From July 2007 to March 2010 (2 years 9 months) Staffing Consultant @ I was recruited back to Microsoft supporting the Windows and Internet Explorer division. This was a difficult time to recruit into Windows as the Windows Vista OS had already been delayed multiple times and let’s just say team morale wasn’t at its highest point. Landing in the Windows Client recruiting team was the best fit for me as it gave me the opportunity to recruit for our company’s flagship product. I owned the CVP relationship and strategy for filling all open headcount. My average requisition load was 86 which is just insane for one recruiter. However, in those days it was the norm. After working in Windows for almost 2 years, I was offered a role in Executive Recruiting. My biggest learning during this period was that when you create activities that help drive success for your team, your own success happens concurrently or shortly follows. From September 2005 to July 2007 (1 year 11 months) Senior Corporate Recruiter @ Working at T-Mobile after leaving Microsoft was a very interesting experience. On the one hand you have Microsoft, even 10 years ago felt like a big company and had some pretty mature processes around recruiting. T-Mobile on the other hand was in the early stages of trying to evolve from a start-up to a mature business. I was there at the time of the multiple JD Power awards and surprise Mariachi bands marching through the recruiting floor (try doing a candidate interview with a trumpet blowing, not easy). My role was supporting the SVP of the largest division, Customer Care. Typical roles included Business Analyst, Operations, Sr. Managers, GM for Call centers, etc. The work wasn’t very challenging in that I was a technical recruiter and these roles were far from that. The challenging part of this job was trying to shift the culture (startup mindset) around hiring and move to a more compliant process which I was asked to do. From working at T-Mobile, I learned I wasn’t interested in fighting the daily battle of process versus a start-up culture of “how we’ve done things from the beginning”. So 6 months later when Microsoft called to recruit me, I took the call. My time was enjoyable at T-Mobile. However, where T-Mobile was at in their company's evolution and where I was at in my career, didn’t align. From April 2005 to September 2005 (6 months) Staffing Consultant (Vendor) @ After supporting Microsoft for 5 years as an agency partner, I was finally working on campus for a product group. I truly believed my experience and all my interactions lead me to that moment. I was super excited and soaking it all in. The expression drinking from a fire hose was realized for me. My work involved owning a CVP relationship and his direct reports. Natural Interactive Services Division was all about speech and natural language processing. NISD was a part of the early work to productize machine learning for Microsoft. I learned so much during this time, from contracting with clients in a corporate setting, building TA plans, offer negotiations and the list goes on and on. I was enthralled by the vast amount of resources and skills of some of the recruiters I worked with during this time. The fun was short lived as I was recruited away after 6 months to T-Mobile for a full-time employment opportunity. From November 2004 to April 2005 (6 months) Senior Technical Recruiter @ I was recruited to Siemens IT Solutions and Services to work specifically on the Microsoft account. My role was to recruit developers and PM’s (Web, SW, dB & many others) into various business groups within Microsoft while developing solid relationships with the MS hiring managers. Strong account management and building credibility were key to getting managers to quickly respond to your submittals. Submitting quality candidates was always my goal. At Siemens, working with Microsoft managers help me realize the value of quality over quantity. In order to set myself apart, I learned to be a consultant to the client about the candidates I represented. Moving beyond just trying to fill a requisition to becoming an active gatekeeper changed everything. I eventually left Siemens after 8 months to pursue an opportunity to work directly for Microsoft as a vendor onsite. From 2004 to 2004 (less than a year) Lead Technical Recruiter @ Like many others, by happenstance, a recruiting opportunity was offered to me and I accepted it. Comforce was my first job in recruiting. I cut my teeth on sourcing and recruiting technical talent for various companies in the Pacific Northwest area. Companies like Microsoft, Boeing, Amazon, Testing Testing 123, Colbalt Group, Compaq Computer Corp., Accenture and various start-ups. Using the limited data available on the internet, a phone book, and a FoxPro database, I was armed and dangerous to make connections. This was an exciting time in the industry, right before the dotcom bust. Agencies and recruiters were popping up everywhere and the early bird got the worm. It was super competitive and the ability to build relationships quickly with candidates was key to driving some sense of loyalty & success. I learned fast that relationships with my clients and great candidates were key to getting repeat placements. In the first month on the job, I made 5 high-dollar bill rate placements and hit bonus (nice). There was definitely a bit of beginners luck involved. However, my success continued and I eventually became one of the top 3 producers for the office. I fell in love with the ability to positively impact a person’s life by placing them in better job situation. From 1999 to 2004 (5 years)

Professional in Human Resources (PHR Certified) @ Human Resources Certification Institute From 2009 to 2012 N/A, Music and Video @ Art Institute of Seattle From 1992 to 1994 Renton High SchoolRenton High School Chris Bell is skilled in: Sourcing, Networking, Talent Acquisition, Strategic HR, Leadership, Technical Recruiting, Strategic Sourcing, Recruiting, Multi-channel Retail, Strategic Planning, Closing Deals, Systems Thinking, Collaboration, Executive Search, Strategy Execution