#Hiring: Microsoft
You can read the job description. You can research the company. You can prepare for every question you think might come up. But it’s much harder to understand what the team behind that role is actually looking for.
#Hiring is UX Outloud’s series taking you behind the curtain of research teams at the companies you’ve told us you want to hear from. Each session is a deep dive with Research and Product leaders who actually hire researchers, many of them responsible for building entire teams.
This month: Microsoft.
We’re sitting down with Paula Bach, Head of Product Research for Windows at Microsoft, for an open conversation about hiring inside one of the world’s most influential product organizations.
What we’ll get into
What hiring looks like behind the curtain
What Paula looks for when evaluating researchers
How candidates can differentiate themselves
What it actually takes to join a team like hers
Bring your hardest questions
What do you wish you could ask the hiring manager before submitting your application? What keeps tripping you up in the job market? What do you want to understand about how senior research leaders make hiring decisions?
Come with your questions. Leave with a sharper story and a clearer sense of how to grow the career you actually want.
Dr. Paula Bach is a Director of UX Research at Microsoft. Over more than a decade, she has led research teams across a wide range of product areas including Windows, Visual Studio, Power BI, Microsoft Fabric, and Edge, helping teams make more human-centered product decisions at every stage. She currently focuses on scaling research through agentic AI infrastructure, building the systems and frameworks that make research more impactful and accessible across the organization. Paula holds a PhD in Human-Computer Interaction from Penn State University and is passionate about the intersection of data science, AI, and the science of human behavior.