...our career site. I know this is one of the biggest hassles for the active job seeker. Sometimes it seems so complicated that you are looking for the quick out ("can't I just send you my resume...do I have to do all this?"). Because us recruiting folk know the back-end and how the selections you make on the jobs search page can impact the results returned, I guess I can offer a little help. Plus most of us, if not search gurus, are power users of search so let me help out a little here with some tips. These tips are about our site, but I suspect that some of the things I am going tell you apply to many, if not most, corporate websites.
Can't I just submit a resume?
Oftentimes, you can submit off the main jobs page without serching jobs. But you may have to look for that option. Windows users, control+F and enter "submit" or "apply" to find this link. But before you do that, decide if you might want to tweak your resume with company specific verbiage first. Also depends on how much time you want to spend looking at each company and how high the company is on your wish list. For your top few companies, I'd invest the time on the career site (and off by the way) doing some research before submitting (incidentally, I encourage this for people applying to Microsoft via other channels...there's alot ot be learned from the career site). Also, if you are going to cut and paste your resume, paste it into a notepad (.txt) file first to remove the formatting...this gives you some control over how it looks in it's inevitable format. Otherwise, it gets converted to .txt anyway. Better for you to see how it looks in that format first before sending it, don't ya think?
Pull-down menus
They're everywhere. You don't have to use them all. For the ones that you are going to use, I would recommend scrolling through the whole list to see what else is there. For example, if you scrolled down to Product Manager (under title), you might not think to continue down to Technical Product Manager, but it's there. Whatever the menu, see if multi-selection is an option. But don't feel like you have to use a menu if it doesn't make sense. I like to do a broad initial search and then look at my search results to gather info to narrow the search. For people who aren't as familiar with titling and categories at a specific company, I think this is the way to go.
Titles
Speaking of titles, what the deal with them anyway? They aren't the greatest search criteria. Microsoft's Marketing Manager might be a Product Marketing Manager elsewhere. Even within the company, a Product Manager for one team could have very similar responsibilities to a Marketing Manager in another. Titles are standardized here but there will always be roles that straddle the line. I wouldn't start with title as a search criteria. You can use it later to narrow down if you need to (once you get some initial search results).
Job Categories
I think this menu is meant to go broader than title, but I think about it similarly. Try to search without it, if you need it, scroll the whole list and try multi-selecting. Again, there are fine lines. Someone who manages relationships and marketing strategy with an ISV could be "Channel Marketing" or "Business Development". What you think of as product management, might be considered program management here. Again, go broad, collect info from your search results, then narrow.
Location
It is what it is. If you are open to relocation, leave it blank. If you do use it, notice for example, there are listings for Palo Alto, Mountain View and San Francisco. Scroll the whole list if you need to select something, then decide. If you know something about the company, you can use this to focus in on a division if you want. For example, if you wanted to work on the Passport team, searching Mountain View might help. Of course, I encourage you to search WA-Redmond.