WANT A JOB WITH AMAZON? BE YOU, DON’T FAKE IT: NEW CEO
For people who like to have an impact on the world, it's hard to find a place that’s more exciting to work than Amazon, said Andy Jassy, chief executive officer of the world’s largest online retailer, as career advice for young professionals.
“We hope a lot of people thinking about new opportunities will think about Amazon,” said Jassy, at a fireside chat with Linkedin Editor at Largebusiness and Finance Devin Banerjee, at the professional networking platform’s Career Day event.
Amazon was also hosting its firstever Career Day in India on Thursday. The virtual event brought together Amazon leadership and employees to share what makes Amazon an exciting workplace.
In India, Amazon is hiring for more than 8,000 direct job openings across 35 cities. These opportunities are spread across corporate, technology (tech), customer service, and operations roles.
“I think you want to pick a company that has some impact on the world,” said Jassy. Looking at Amazon in the first 25odd years, Jassy said the firm has been inventing and changing customer lives every day. Globally, it is hiring 55,000 technical and corporate employees and is adding another 125,000 employees to its fulfillment centre network. These roles are spread across a broad array of functions, ranging from software development engineers, product managers, marketing, machine learning and artificial intelligence practitioners to research scientists.
When asked what advice he would give anyone wanting to make a great impression in a job interview, he simply said: “Just be yourself. If you fake it in the interview, you end up either having to continue to fake it or people don't know who you are”.
“We like people who are strategic and can see the big picture, but who are also passionate about the details,” he said. What Jassy has learnt at Amazon is that all the best ideas that are talked about are put on a whiteboard and where rubber meets the road, are the details. “We like people who I would say are more missionary than mercenary. We want people who care most about the mission of the team and the company,” he said. Jassy joined the e-commerce giant 24 years ago, fresh out of graduate school. An alumnus of Harvard University, he joined Amazon as part of the eight-people marketing group after taking his final exam in May 1997. Here all the roles were too big for them. In the beginning, he was told to lead competitive intelligence and customer retention for the firm.
He was later asked to work on a project where the company explored other product categories Amazon should consider getting into, besides books. He looked at areas such as music, videos, and software.
Jassy went back to build customer relationships and also led product management, music business, and marketing. After that, an unusual role came to Jassy, which was “shadowing” Amazon Founder Jeff Bezos.