Hello.. I tried applying for openings in Microsoft career website few times. But I have never received any response from Microsoft so far. Is applying through career website is not the right channel to get an interview scheduled?. I have H1B visa. Will this be an issue?
Referral
The external hiring process sucks. HR is a bottleneck. When they get around to looking at resumes for a specific position they scan through and only pass along anyone that clearly have ALL required skills. Hiring managers usually only see a small subset of applicants (unless the actively schedule time with their recruiter to review the resumes). So 1) make sure that your resume is easy for a recruiter to match to the position 2) a referral is helpful, especially if they can reach out to the hiring manager (not just submitting it into the system).
Referrals ! That's all that can get you in.
In my experience, jobs are posted on a company site after they have already identified a preferred candidate, or when they cannot find a candidate, often because the requirements are too rigid and rare.