Amazon.com has been crushing and redefining the landscape of commerce since 1995 and it has been attracting the human resources to feed this domination ever since. A marked shift in its strategic human resource management success arguably began in 2007 when the company was not to be found in the top 25 of most-desired places for MBAs to land jobs. Five years later, Amazon.com was number 6 in a Fortune survey.
WSJ recently published an interview article with Jennifer Boden, director of global university programs at Amazon, where she speaks about “assessing candidates, avoiding interview mishaps and why M.B.A.s deserve their salaries.” Since more and more students, grad and undergrad alike, are or should be targeting a career at Amazon, this short article can have long-lasting effects on your advisees.
Some major takeaways:
-Amazon.com is much less interested in where you have been, both academically and professionally, and much more interested in what you have done. They want well-articulated examples of projects you took ownership of and results you delivered.
-“The core qualities that cut across each of those positions are a really strong sense of ownership, customer obsession, a strong bias for action and teamwork,” says Ms. Boden.
-Participation in Entrepreneurship programs during academic study is “very attractive” to Amazon.
-Amazon both sticks to and works outside of established academic recruiting calendars. In short, if you ought to be working at Amazon, they’ll talk with you.
-91,300 full- and part-time employees and they are hiring “hundreds” of MBAs per year
