2018 HRM Impact Award Winner

Message from Jay Steffensmeier, Director of Talent Assessment, Amazon

When Amazon.com launched in 1995, it was with the mission “to be Earth’s most customer-centric company.” Utilizing our customers’ divine discontent as our North Star, we push past limits so they can live more extraordinary lives. So far, this mindset has helped us achieve some incredible things.

PROJECT TITLE

Amazon’s simulation strategy to scale and preserve the candidate experience 

PROJECT SUMMARY

Over the past three years, Amazon has grown by more than 300,000 employees. This presented Amazon with a unique challenge: surpass previous unmatched hiring needs while also preserving the candidate experience and maintaining a high hiring bar. To meet this goal, Amazon’s Talent Assessment team of industrial-organizational psychologists and HR professionals designed a strategy to deliver innovative simulation-focused assessments for a wide variety of roles. These online assessments are rooted in the Amazon Leadership Principles and the skills relevant to each specific role. While the specific tasks, competencies, and implementation strategy for each online assessment are tailored to the role, all simulations are designed around the common framework of job-relevance, prediction, candidate experience, and scalability. Amazon worked with specialists at PDRI, an SHL company, and with Shaker Consulting to assist in our mission. Our strategy allows Amazon to have a global reach and ensures that candidates anywhere in the world can be considered for careers at Amazon.