This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "Working Backwards" by Colin Bryar and Bill Carr. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.
How does Amazon’s hiring process work? Why does it approach hiring the way it does?
Amazon’s hiring process involves many interviews with a diverse set of employees. Understanding how Amazon hires new employees is helpful both for potential applicants and for other companies looking to improve their processes.
Keep reading to learn how and why Amazon hires the way that it does.
Amazon’s Rigorous Hiring Process
Amazon’s hiring process is uniquely rigorous. Amazon strives to perfect its hiring process because of another one of its guiding principles: Only hire applicants with the potential to be better than the existing team.
Hiring top talent is important because the quality of new hires determines your organization’s culture. As your company grows, new hires will quickly outnumber veteran team members and make up the vast majority of the team. If your lenient hiring process leads to new hires with low standards for their work, it can create a permanent culture of low standards across the organization.
(Shortform note: In No Rules Rules, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings takes this idea further, arguing that managers should not only exclusively hire employees with the highest standards on the market, but also fire employees who let their work slip below the organization’s standards. An organization’s culture is determined by the standards held by the majority of employees. If everyone on the team performs at an elite level, each employee will be motivated to do their best and excited to work with such talented coworkers. According to Hastings, if all new hires understand that they might be fired for poor performance and that this is nothing to be ashamed of, you can make this high turnover relatively painless.)
In this article, we’ll first explore what makes Amazon’s interview process unconventional; then, we’ll take a look at the company’s unique tactic of appointing a special team of elite interviewers with the power to veto any hire.
Amazon’s Interview Process
Amazon has crafted a unique hiring process that can consistently identify the most talented applicants: First, each applicant is separately interviewed by many Amazon employees—typically five to seven. Each interviewer submits their written judgment of the candidate before learning what the other interviewers think—this keeps the group from influencing one another, fostering objectivity. Finally, the interviewers meet and discuss the candidate, ideally coming to a consensus on whether to accept them (although the final decision is usually made by an experienced hiring manager).
Culture Protectors in the Interview Process
Another way that Amazon’s hiring process is unique involves a group of specially trained interviewers that we’ll call “Culture Protectors” (Amazon calls this group the “Bar Raisers”). Amazon selects the best interviewers to become Culture Protectors and trains them into masters by coaching them through countless interviews.
The purpose of this group is to ensure that the company doesn’t accept a single low-quality employee. At least one Culture Protector interviews every new employee, and they have the power to reject any applicant, even if the hiring manager wants to hire them. This bias toward rejection ensures that every member of the organization is above a certain baseline of quality, even if it results in understaffing in the short term.
(Shortform note: To further protect their culture, some startups choose to give this veto power not only to a specially trained group of interviewers but also to every employee at the company (at least in the early stages of their business). This ensures that every new employee is more than a highly skilled worker—they’re someone the other team members want to work with. Additionally, new hires feel valued and motivated once they’re told that everyone in the company wanted to hire them.)
Amazon’s Hiring Process: Why It’s So Rigorous
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How any company can grow the same way Amazon did
How Amazon rapidly scaled its startup into an online empire
The four tools Amazon’s workers use for strategy development
Amazon's Rigorous Hiring Process. Amazon's hiring process is uniquely rigorous. Amazon strives to perfect its hiring process because of another one of its guiding principles: Only hire applicants with the potential to be better than the existing team.
Overall, the Amazon interview process will include a higher emphasis on behavioral interview questions than at other companies like Meta or Google. This is because the company is looking for candidates who align with their 16 leadership principles.
Answer – 1: My interest in Amazon stems from its ambitious mission to be the most customer-centric company in the world. I believe I'm a great fit for Amazon because of my customer-focused mindset and experience in customer service.
Designing a strategic, data-driven hiring process aligned with organizational goals and research best practices leads to higher quality hires that are a strong cultural and skills fit. This directly contributes to higher retention, job performance, productivity, and ultimately organizational success.
However, landing a job at Amazon is quite challenging. In this article, we'll cover the factors that add to this challenge: Amazon sets a very high bar. Amazon's technical rounds are rigorous.
Specific to Amazon Loop interviews, one in every five candidates who gets invited to the Loop interview usually lands an offer. So the typical Amazon Loop interview success rate is 20%.
Firstly, Amazon is a globally recognized and respected company that has revolutionized the e-commerce industry. I am drawn to the company's strong values and commitment to customer satisfaction. I believe that working at Amazon will provide me with valuable experience and opportunities for growth.
Prepare short descriptions of a handful of situations. Be ready to answer follow-up questions in greater detail. Select examples that highlight your unique skills. Have examples that showcase your experience and how you've taken risks, succeeded, failed, and grown.
Companies are seemingly coming up with new, higher, and harder hoops to jump through at every turn. That translates to endless rounds of interviews, various arbitrary tests, and complex exercises and presentations that entail hours of work and prep.
Amazon's hiring process timeline takes about two weeks. However, it can vary depending on the position you're applying for and the number of interview candidates. For managerial and senior positions, the process may take longer as there is usually a greater emphasis on finding the right fit.
We seek top talent from all industries and a range of backgrounds to join our offices and operations centers around the world. People who succeed at Amazon have something in common—they are customer-centric, they are leaders and they are innovators.
Regular employment warehouse jobs (non-seasonal) are a great chance to earn the benefits you want while growing your career and skills. It's easy to apply and get a job offer right away — you don't even need to interview. Join the team and enjoy the feeling of making customers happy.
However, according to Misha Yurchenko, the author of “Cracking the Code”, the success rate aka the percentage of candidates that receive a job offer following the Amazon Loop interview is 20%.
How Many Rounds Are There in Amazon's Virtual Interview? The standard Amazon virtual interview consists of 2 or 4 rounds in total, with the virtual interview taking 45 minutes to one hour.
Amazon's recruitment process consists of six main parts: resume screening, phone screening, hiring manager interview, writing test, loop interviews, and hiring committee reviews. The most difficult and decisive parts of the interview process are phone screenings (1-2 rounds), and on-site interviews (4-5 rounds).
Interviews are often won or lost by the questions you ask the interviewer at the end. Half of the battle is preparing well and showing up to answer the interviewer's questions; the other half is asking them questions that get them thinking (and make you stand out).
Introduction: My name is Eusebia Nader, I am a encouraging, brainy, lively, nice, famous, healthy, clever person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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