The "Scaling at Amazon Speed - Best Practices for Recruiting & Hiring" session from the Business Track of the AWS Startup Day Kyiv 2018

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Scaling at Amazon Speed - Best
Practices for Recruiting & Hiring
Jonno Southam – Venture Capital BDM & Amazon Bar Raiser
November 20th 2018

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Amazon Headcount
Source: Geekwire

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The Mis-hire challenge
”I think choosing great people is much more difficult than picking great markets
because we have always understood the technology and understood the markets.
Picking great people is a less than 50 percent proposition, and if you are right 52
percent of the time, they ought to build a statue to you.”*
—Don Valentine, Sequoia Capital - October 2011

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How does Amazon mitigate against the
risks of a mis-hire when hiring at scale?

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1 – Always be hiring
“Great companies are not going to
wait, they are going to execute
and hire talented candidates
opportunistically. They know that
great engineers are not tethered
to a tech stack and can freely
move about from tech stack to
tech stack in less time than it
takes a company to hire someone
that fits the exact specification.
— Thor Bucy, Rivera Partners.

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# 3 Investor Pitch Deck
Biggest Challenge = Finding People
# 1 Customer Pitch Deck
# 2 Employee Pitch Deck

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“The culture is what creates the foundation for all future
innovation”
“If you break the culture, you break the machine that
creates your products.”
- Brian Chesky, CEO airbnb
2 – Always keep your company vision and
values crystal clear

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2 – Always keep your company vision and
values crystal clear
“Our vision is to be earth's most customer centric company; to build a
place where people can come to find and discover anything they
might want to buy online.”

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customer obsession
ownership
invent and simplify
are right, a lot
hire and develop the best
insist on highest standards
think big
bias for action
frugality
Learn & be curious
earn trust
dive deep
have backbone; disagree & commit
deliver results
leadership principles

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3 - Always hire the best people
Setting the bar high in our approach to hiring has been, and will be, the
single most important element of Amazon.com's success.”
- Jeff Bezos 1998 letter to shareholders

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3 - Always hire the best people

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4 - Always maintain a robust and repeatable
hiring process
Phone Interview 1
Interview 1
Interview 2
Interview 3
Interview 4
Interview 5
Written
Exercise
Phone Interview 2
Competencies
Competencies
Competencies
Competencies
Competencies
Competencies
Competencies

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Feedback Decision
Hire
No Hire
4 - Always maintain a robust and repeatable
hiring process

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5 – Always use evidence as data during interviews
Situation
Task
Action
Result Star

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6 - Always dive deep with probing questions

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7 – Never be on the fence with your feedback

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8 – Never compare candidates with each other
"I'd rather interview 50 people and not hire anyone than hire the wrong person.”
- Jeff Bezos

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9 – Always ensure the right decision is made
1. Performance - Is the person
better than 50% of the
current team
2. Long Term Impact - Does
this candidate have upside
growth potential to have
long-term impact?

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10 - Finally, always give candidates a
great experience regardless of outcome

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Further Reading
https://notion.vc/app/uploads/2018/10/Game-Changers-
16ss.pdf or Google ‘Notion Game Changers’
5 things that changed at Marketo after hiring Game
Changers Phil Fernandez, Marketo
Finding Game Changers at every stage of the business
Tien Tzuo, Zuora
Why is it hard to hire a Game Changer?
Maddy Cross, Head of Talent, Notion
Hiring and developing the best
Jonno Southam, Amazon Web Services

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Thank you and questions?
Jonno Southam – Venture Capital BDM & Amazon Bar Raiser
jsoutham@amazon.co.uk
@jonnosoutham