Microsoft is trying to bring in new team members to join in its Kinect development team. Earlier this week, The Seattle Times reported that Microsoft tried an unusual recruitment technique. It hired a bacon cart to be placed near Amazon.com"s headquarters in Seattle, Washington on Monday. The idea was that people walking by would try out the meat and also get information about the Kinect hiring efforts. It even had a tag line: "Wake Up and Smell The Future."
While these efforts might have attracted a lot of attention, it apparently didn"t sit well with the owner of the bacon cart itself. In a follow up story on the Seattle Times web site, Dante Rivera, owner of Dante"s Inferno Dogs, decided to not participate in Microsoft"s campaign any more after Monday.
Why? Rivera thought that the promotion was for the Kinect motion sensor camera itself, not for a recruitment drive to hire people to the Kinect team from Amazon.com. As he explains, he has done events in the past for both Microsoft and Amazon.com. He states, "I just thought it would be a conflict of interest. I sell hot dogs. That"s what I do. So I thought it was best to keep everybody happy. ... I"m in business to make friends." There"s no word if Microsoft will attempt to continue its bacon-filled hiring drive for Kinect.