[glaak]

It is unusual that all 5 people hired were female. But, remember that coincidences happen. There are plenty of schools in which all 15 people hired are male. Unless there is some reason why your school specifically would be set apart, I don't think this is anything more than a strange coincidence.

It's possible that something in the middle is going on -- a recruiter asked a professor for recommendations and he/she happened to recommend mostly women.

[btilly]

If the presented figures are true, the probability of that happening entirely independently by chance are about 0.3 in a million.

It is reasonable to conclude that those decisions were not independent. But you're absolutely right that the correlation may come from the school rather than from Microsoft.

[smokey_the_bear]

I'm pretty sure the recruiter assigned to my school was specifically a diversity recruiter.