Amazon.com Inc plans to recruit 55,000 people worldwide for corporate and technology functions in the coming months, CEO Andy Jassy told Reuters.
That’s more than a third of the workforce at Google as of June 30 and almost all of Facebook.
Jassy said in his first press interview since he rose to the top position of Amazon in July, the company needed more firepower to keep up with demand in retail, cloud and advertising, among others. He said the company’s new bet of putting satellites in orbit to expand broadband access, called Project Kuiper, would also require many new employees.
With Amazon’s annual job fair slated to begin on September 15th, Jassy hopes now is a good time to recruit. “There are so many jobs displaced or changed during the pandemic and there are so many people thinking about other and new jobs,” said Jassy, who cited a US poll by PwC that said 65% of the time Workers wanted a new look.
“It’s part of what we believe that ‘Careers Day’ is so timely and so useful,” he said. The new hires would represent a 20 percent increase in Amazon’s technology and corporate workforce, which currently numbers around 275,000 worldwide, the company said.
The move from Amazon, just the latest job frenzy it has started, follows a period of deeper scrutiny of its work practices and opposition from the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Earlier this year, a failed attempt by some Alabama employees to organize showed off Amazon’s onerous warehouse work and its aggressive stance against unions. After that battle, Jeff Bezos, the CEO who succeeded Jassy, said Amazon needed a better vision for its employees.
When asked how he could transform Amazon’s sophisticated workplace culture, Jassy said that its strong customer focus and ingenuity had enabled improvements.
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“Everyone in the company has the freedom – and really the expectation – to critically examine how it can get better and then find ways to do it better.”
Positions that Amazon markets include positions in engineering, research science, and robotics.
In a re-opening US economy and a tight job market, some companies are struggling to fill vacancies and maintain the balance between remote and face-to-face work. It was unclear how many of the Amazon jobs – such as competitive engineers – have been open for some time.
Amazon, which had previously promoted a “office-centered culture”, later withdrew its vision and, starting next year, offered its employees the opportunity to spend only three days a week in person in its offices.
Amazon is already the second largest private employer in the US and hired more than 500,000 people in 2020, mainly in warehouse and delivery operations. This area has seen significant sales.
The company is investing heavily in building more warehouses and increasing wages to attract workers to meet strong demand from buyers looking to have products delivered to their homes. Jassy said Amazon is “very competitive on the compensation side”. He said, “We’re ahead of the game on the $ 15 minimum wage,” and for some states the average starting salary is $ 17 an hour.
Of the 55,000+ jobs Jassy has announced, over 40,000 will be in the United States while others will be in countries like India, Germany, and Japan.
Amazon had already promised a big tech hiring frenzy when looking for a location for its second headquarters in 2017. Officials in cities and states across North America flattered the company for its jobs and tax dollars.
Arlington, Virginia, the “HQ2” contest winner, which so far has a tiny fraction of the 25,000 rolls Amazon has promised it over a decade, currently has about 2,800 openings. The city of Bellevue, where Amazon is growing near its hometown of Seattle, has another 2,000.
The career fair will be global. That was after Amazon turned on 22,000 people from India, including outside of the United States, last year, Jassy said.
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