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200k people applied for jobs at Amazon in a single week
- domnomnom 7y agoFor 30k open positions
- rokalakt 7y agoLess than 4 applicants per seat. Pretty low.
- noneeeed 7y agoThat is actually a surprisingly good ratio. I work for a company that deals with this kind of data and the applicant to hire ratio at some companies, especially in retail or unskilled jobs can easily hit much, much higher than that. When I see people complaining about the hiring processes for many low qualification jobs they often have no idea just how many people they are up againt. They get annoyed because they didn't get an interview, but if you are getting 50 applicants for every position you're not going to interview even half of them. As my boss likes to say, bulk recruitment is an exercise in saying "no" as efficiently and quickly as possible, whilst pissing off as few as possible (you want them to reapply or not hold a grudge against your brand). Recruitment is very easy to screw up.
- cm2187 7y agoI think my best experience as a (student) job seeker was McKinsey. They called me to provide me some detailed feedback about why they wouldn't hire me. I was very grateful and it is true that it contributes to their brand. The students they turn down may be their client in a distant future.
- pingyong 7y agoHonestly the rules aren't that difficult (applying them might be). You just have to answer quickly (either with "sorry no" or even with "you're in consideration", really anything), not hearing from people for weeks is the worst. And ideally, provide a reason for why you weren't hired and what they would like to see from you. That's really all. If you do that, people most likely won't hold a grudge. Casually mentioning that there were 50 other applicants probably helps, too. ("Out of the 243 applicants, we are only able interview 10.")
- noneeeed 7y agoPeople do hold a grudge, I see it all the time in our data and feedback. People applying for entry level jobs angry because they were rejected quickly based on their CV. You can do all the basics right, but a lot of people are still going to be pissed off when they get automatically rejected based on a computer scoring the 100 candidates for the position, even if you explain why that is necessary. I do think more companies need to be more honest about applicant to hire ratios, but the reality is that a lot of people treat anything short of hand-written letter from the hiring manager explaining in detail how they could have done better as a slap in the face.
- TrackerFF 7y agoFWIW, one local supermarket cashier job near me got almost 500 applications - so the 3/20 for this isn't horrible. The last back-end position I applied for had like 15 applicants
- jnmandal 7y agoIts actually 400 positions according to the article. Another 25000 are to open in the next decade.
- hon3ybadg3r 7y agoLooks to me like Oktoberfest!
- peter303 7y agoThere are people who prefer seasonal work. Maybe Xmas and summer gigs with rest of year off. Read the book Nomadland for details.
- C1sc0cat 7y agoThat's what I thought, I live near one of the Big Amazon distribution centres in the UK and adds for Amazon Christmas workers are all over the Busses and billboards at this time of year.
- vixen99 7y agoYou mean 'ads'.
- cowsandmilk 7y agoThese aren’t seasonal positions. From https://www.cbsnews.com/news/amazon-jobs-to-hire-30000-people-amazon-is-holding-job-fairs-across-6-cities/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/amazon-jobs-to-hire-30000-peopl... : > Amazon said all of the openings are for full time positions and come with benefits. And the company said the openings are not related to the usual increase in hiring it does to prepare for the busy holiday shopping season.
- brosinante 7y agoThe industry has disconnected itself so much from actual human beings that "There are people who prefer seasonal work" is a valid response.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- harry8 7y agoIs that an audited number? Smells like a corporate pr piece...
- jdc 7y agoBingo. https://www.google.com/search?q="Thousands+of+job-seekers+flocked+to+one+of+those+employment+fairs+this+week+in+Arlington+County,+Virginia"&filter=0 https://www.google.com/search?q="Thousands+of+job-seekers+fl...
- klohto 7y agoCurrent media recycles headlines to save on work cost. When you have to churn out 20 articles per day, you don’t have many options left. This doesn’t prove anything.
- jdc 7y agoIt's good enough for me unless someone can show that the sites in the results are owned by the same company. Edit: The articles seem to be completely identical. That's a lot of recycling!
- filmgirlcw 7y agoCBS offers a wire-service of sorts to many of its affiliates so the same story is reposted lots of different places, similar to the AP.
- conjectures 7y ago'Wire-service' as C20 jargon for copy pasta.
- filmgirlcw 7y agoNo...it’s a syndication agreement.
- theomega 7y agoOnly slightly related: If I open the link on my iOS device, music playing stops (Spotify). Somehow CBS manages with their useless auto play videos to kill my background music playing. Should this be possible? I thought there is no auto play video on IOS?
- fuzz4lyfe 7y agoIn chrome you can often force auto play by playing a sound (and having that fail) and then playing another sound right after that. Maybe IOS has a similar loophole?
- davnicwil 7y agoIs there some kind of legitimate reason it has to work this way that this workaround takes advantage of, or is it just an oversight/bug? How you're describing it it sounds like they only block the first sound you try to auto play - if the latter is the reason then that's really surprising.
- bobsoap 7y agoOn Android, in Firefox, they cover the bottom third of the screen with a permanent notification that you can't close and contains two links: open in CBS app, and open in Chrome. Looks like they don't really want my traffic. Oh well.
- zxcvbn4038 7y agoSounds more likely jobs offered in one of the rural areas. I love shopping Amazon and I love their technology even more but their work/life balance is terrible. Their tech guys live in fear, real fear, of being someplace without WiFi. I’d probably only last a year - I go to all the parent/teacher conferences at my kids school and that clearly goes against the grain at Amazon.
- noego 7y agoEveryone I know at Amazon works 8 hour days, completely disconnect when they finish with work, and have tons of flexibility for working from home when family related issues arise. I don't doubt that you know specific people who are having the opposite experience - Amazon culture varies a lot based on which vp/director you work for. But your friends' experience isn't indicative of all tech employees.
- akhilcacharya 7y agoI work at Amazon and this is basically my experience. I don’t know why there’s so much FUD about it, and it’s been the same on other teams I’ve worked on as well.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- mav3rick 7y agoMost of my friends left as they were done with the low pay and on call.
- akhilcacharya 7y agoAgain, what do you define as “low pay”. I’d really love to know! I’m on-call at this moment too. Like I said previously, either there’s a concrete reasoning for this or it’s just plain elitism.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- NoblePublius 7y agoNot in Queens.
- delfinom 7y agoEven in Virginia they only forecast 25 jobs related to the new HQ next year, and maybe, just maybe if their PR magic ball says yes, there might be 25k jobs.....over the next decade PR firm fingers crossed
- rshnotsecure 7y agoThis is not unusual. My spouse works for Glassdoor. Entry level programmer jobs in Texas will get 2000 applications (not bots) within about 72 hours. Desperate people from all over the US. I think at one time the advice to “play the numbers game” was correct for online job apps. Not anymore. Even more saddening, Glassdoor uses a temp/test sample job ad. It’s for cat sitting. $15/hr. That will get hundreds of apps in 48 hours if someone forgets to take it down (is only supposed to go up for 60 mins max but things happen).
- vectorEQ 7y agoi just find it funny that theres posts about shortages of it people, and posts about a quarter of a million ppl applying to one company. who's lying. :D
- hoffs 7y agoJust because someone applied doesn't mean they are any good.
- angstrom 7y ago*Shortage of qualified people. I pity the people that have to filter that.
- hvidgaard 7y agoIt's crazy what people think is acceptable. At least half of all the people that apply to our junior positions cannot answer simple question such as "how would you find the first "42" in an array of integers, and give me the index". If they don't have an idea of how to count with a for loop and write an if statement, they're not qualified for programming. Some even ask if they can take the "assignment" home and get back to me.
- pingyong 7y agoHow do they get that far, does their resume look good?
- df 7y agoon the other hand - I can't imagine I'm the only person to have been getting quite a few "come work for us" emails from Amazon via LinkedIn recently (two in the last month, six in the last year). The solicitations do not appear to be very carefully targeted - they seem to mention everything from machine learning to mobile app development.
- save_ferris 7y agoI get so many solicitations from recruiters that clearly didn’t look at my profile (i.e. “looking for Java architect” and I have zero java experience) that I’ve started reporting and blocking them.
- aripickar 7y agoI’ve gotten those and I work for Amazon. The recruiters spam everyone.
- harry8 7y agoand trash amazon's reputation. Can't even do a mail merge from 1983, wow, AI ML expertise at amazon on show there. I bet it makes you feel valued as an employee too.
- Washuu 7y agoAn Amazon recruiter messaged me yesterday and in such: 1.) Used the wrong name repeatedly even after correcting them. 2.) Asking me to apply to a role that is a step down. 3.) "The position you are applying for is in Seattle." - After saying I was not interested in Seattle.
- JCharante 7y agoI figure it's similar to applying to colleges. Stanford, Yale, etc send you info packets and ask you to apply but then reject you. Although some schools figure that if it takes $20 to acquire someone's attention and get them to apply to you (and pay a $90) fee then they can pocket the $70 (minus reviewer expenses) and look more exclusive when it comes to acceptance rates, but that's not the case with companies.
- astura 7y agoIf they have this many applicants then why are their recruiters always contacting me on LinkedIn? Is everyone applying really junior?
- mindfulplay 7y agoI would imagine they have one of the highest attrition rates ever for any tech company. I am a lifelong Amazon customer but choose never to be an employee of theirs.
- GreenJelloShot 7y ago> I would imagine they have one of the highest attrition rates ever for any tech company. Pretty much this.
- mcv 7y agoMaybe it's really the other way around: Amazon has been trying to get 200k people to apply to their jobs.
- flyGuyOnTheSly 7y agoAnd this is why amazon workers are abused. Supply significantly outpaces demand.
- dymk 7y agoThat’s not really abuse then if so many people want to work there. They know what they’re getting themselves into.
- chiefalchemist 7y ago> But Craig Newman, who also lives in the area, said he's looking forward to the increase in commuters. "One of the jobs I'm working at now is an Uber driver. I hope Amazon comes to the area and brings in a lot more traffic." Wish for MORE traffic? The race to the bottom is over, and...no one has won.
- apexalpha 7y agoThis is an ad for Amazons job fairs.
- hi41 7y agoMy friend’s wife took almost 8 months to find a production support job. Why are jobs so hard to get these days? Is it because competition is so high and for a single job there are 20 applicants?
- bob_theslob646 7y agoGreat question. No one seems to know why. The worst part about the job search, is not even getting a response. most companies don't even have an HR function so it's cheaper to just not answer. It's also cheaper not to get into a lawsuit by giving an answer as well which kind of sucks. I wish there was a way to protect companies in their speech so that's not discriminatory to tell them why we didn't choose the candidate.
- hi41 7y agoThank you for your response. She applied for 800 job postings. That was the only thing she did the whole day - apply job after job. She maintained an excel file with all the details. Which company she applied for, who responded, who rejected. It was demoralizing. She got a job now but she started the job hunt last November.
- notTyler 7y agoI assume it looks bad if a candidate someone hires ends up being a terrible fit. This is basically how it goes everywhere else at larger companies. Visibility is more important than getting things done. Like, I'm staffed at a company that isn't Arthur Anderson right now on an internal project and our SM/PO came back from scrum of scrums and said everyone was massively overestimating tasks to make sure they got them in on time. If you finish early you get pushback on starting something else because it looks 'so bad' if work goes from one sprint to the next. Slow work and hitting metrics > everything, I guess.
- jimbob45 7y ago- H1Bs are cheaper to hire and take the place of American jobs (though to a far lesser degree than you'll hear during this upcoming election - Everyone is preparing for a recession (for the last three years now) - Jobs are posted online and get tons of applicants now. That makes it easier to switch cities and not have to go through a period of unemployment but that also means they get tons of applicants. Are many of them bots? You bet.
- tryitnow 7y agoGreat clickbait. The first sentence provides crucial context - Amazon wants to hire 30K. So they had, on average, about 7 applications for every job. That actually doesn't seem so great. It's even less impressive when it's incredibly easy to get a ton of low-quality matches when recruiting. So if Amazon execs wanted to tout a big number of applications they could just advertise these positions in a wildly aggressive way so as to get a ton of poor quality matches. And I'm willing to bet this is exactly what they did. This actually makes me a lot less inclined to work at Amazon - it seems like they're just playing a numbers game, not really trying to recruit for cultural fit. I wonder how many of these people will be laid off within 3 years of being hired.
- joshlegs 7y agobut were all 30k jobs listed? I'm assuming the positions listed were nowhere near close to the positions they need to hire for. As in, they probably havent even listed for a lot of the roles. That said, I really didn't read the article :o
- sieabahlpark 7y agoYou can assume if they wanted to hire 30k people they probably have a listing that applies to more than one position.
- joshlegs 7y agosure, but what i'm saying, is were all the actual unique positions listed, not were each individual position for each job listed .... make sense?
- sieabahlpark 7y agoWhat benefit would they have to do that? They need to hire 30k people, if more roles evolve as they interview and realize they need them they'll make them but then again, if you're hiring 30k people at once you probably have a good idea of who you need to hire all the way up and down the management chain.
- thorwasdfasdf 7y agoI'm just glad their new headquarters isn't in New York or California: that would've been terrible. Arlington housing prices are already at 500$/sq foot. i really think they could've still picked a better place.
- williamDafoe 7y agoThe funnel at my company in my division for software is 700:3.
- avgDev 7y agoI had a recruiter reach out to me 3 times now about the job in the new HQ at the alexa team. I'm not interested but I am not surprised so many are applying. Amazon is hiring really aggressively right now.
- williamDafoe 7y agoPeople are listening to too much government propaganda. The percentage of Americans employed is actually EXTREMELY low! The gov press releases EXCLUDE all those unemployed pesky minorities with a category called "discouraged"(= non white) workers! Excluding this recovery, employment is at a 35-year low! https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/EMRATIO https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/EMRATIO