Amazon is currently the second most valuable company in the world after Apple. For becoming this big every company needs contribution of trustworthy and hard-working employees. Amazon gives employment to over 5,50,000 across the world and to evaluate them, Jeff Bezos has a very simple yet effective theory.
Also Read: 10 Popular Companies Owned By Amazon’s Founder – Jeff Bezos
A letter that Jeff wrote to shareholders in 1998 is going viral in which he had revealed the process of hiring new Amazon employees. During that time the company had only 2,100 employees and the same process has been used since then. “During our hiring meetings, we ask people to consider three questions before making a decision,” Jeff has written.
- Will you admire this person? If you think about the people you’ve admired in your life, they are probably people you’ve been able to learn from or take an example from. For myself, I’ve always tried hard to work only with people I admire, and I encourage folks here to be just as demanding. Life is definitely too short to do otherwise.
- Will this person raise the average level of effectiveness of the group they’re entering? We want to fight entropy. The bar has to continuously go up. I ask people to visualize the company 5 years from now. At that point, each of us should look around and say, “The standards are so high now — boy, I’m glad I got in when I did!”
- Along what dimension might this person be a superstar? Many people have unique skills, interests, and perspectives that enrich the work environment for all of us. It’s often something that’s not even related to their jobs. One person here is a National Spelling Bee champion (1978, I believe). I suspect it doesn’t help her in her everyday work, but it does make working here more fun if you can occasionally snag her in the hall with a quick challenge: “onomatopoeia!”
Also Read: Here’s Why Amazon Offers Employees $5,000 To Quit Their Jobs
After reading these, we feel that Amazon has continued to work with the same approach. Even today, hiring teams are asked to evaluate candidates compared to its existing employees, and only those who are better than the existing ones are selected. This ensures the quality check of employees which continuously keeps on increasing with time.
What are your thoughts on this? Do let us know in the comments section.
