Until last year, Amazon had little to no oversight over its hiring process. As a result, an Insider interview revealed that managers were in a state of being able to recruit and hire far more than the prescribed number.
According to an internal document obtained by Insider, Amazon Web Services’ utility computing team, for example, was only allowed 7,798 jobs in 2022, but actually posted 24,988 jobs. bottom. In other words, the team was posting more than three times the number of jobs it was aiming for at the time.
The internal document found that Amazon lacked standardization and governance around the gap between open and open positions, resulting in a “process prone to inconsistencies, errors, and potential abuse,” including “over-hiring.” can be read.
“This created room for over-recruitment in certain cost centers, fostering span of control and level ratio anomalies,” the internal document said.
“Span of control” is an industry term for the number of direct reports per manager. “Level” is a tech-industry term for an employee’s job level, which determines their salary. Theoretically, if multiple job openings for the same post with different job levels are made, there is a possibility that the department will have a shortage of roles or actors that exceeds the planning budget.
These flaws in Amazon’s hiring process are a good example of the company’s rush to expand during the tech boom through the end of 2022, and the lack of scrutiny.
A former recruiter, who spoke to Insider on condition of anonymity, said the job openings (referred to internally at Amazon as “open requisitions”) were supposed to be “aggressively” filled. Amazon also had a problem of “over-hiring” due to a lack of oversight of its recruiting and related hiring processes, with leaders trying to “push people where they could.”
The aftermath of the mass hiring has been tough on Amazon employees. After announcing 18,000 layoffs in January, the largest ever in the company’s history, Amazon said on March 20 that it will cut an additional 9,000 jobs over the next few weeks. The new job cuts will also target AWS, the company’s long-profitable cloud computing division, the people said.
An Amazon spokesperson could not be reached for comment.
project procession
The aforementioned internal document defines vacancies as “permitted number of hires” and open requisitions as “recruitment for vacancies” and states:
“Theoretically, you shouldn’t have an open requisition without a corresponding vacancy ID, unless you’ve been authorized to front-load, or have previously advertised for known future vacancies.”
To solve the problem, Amazon’s HR team urged the company to strengthen its then-one-man job approval process with more approvers, the document said. Managers have started using an internal hiring tool called a “roster” to better understand job openings and actual headcount targets, he said.
At AWS, the human resources team launched a “project procession.” This is a new “demand signaling program” to match the company’s open requisitions with hiring demand, according to the documents. The project used a roster for leaders and recruiters to share information about hiring needs.
However, maintaining a 1:1 ratio of vacancies to job openings would make it impossible to “cast the net across a wide range of geographies, levels, and occupations to meet the allotted numbers.” The ability to recruit new workers has declined,” said some who complained.
Staffing adjustments often backfired. After hiring a replacement for an employee who was about to retire, the predecessor also stayed, sometimes resulting in two people in the same post.
“These things can pose challenges in a highly competitive and fast-moving job market,” the document said.
Amazon isn’t alone in getting more jobs than it needs. Some recruiters post job listings that are not tied to actual job openings (called “ghost jobs”) in an attempt to impress the company’s growth or to secure candidates for future employment. Sometimes, reports The Wall Street Journal. Meta also recently announced it would stop hiring about 5,000 unfilled posts.
But Amazon actively fills most posts without permission. Lack of internal governance is partly to blame, said the former recruiter.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in a March 20 memo to employees that the company’s mass hiring made sense during its pandemic-boosted growth period but is no longer the case for the immediate economy. It is reported that it plans to proceed with “rationalization” of costs and the number of personnel due to uncertainty about the future. and writes:
“The most important aspect of this year’s annual plan is to streamline in a way that allows us to better invest in the important long-term customer experiences that we believe can meaningfully improve our customers’ lives and Amazon as a whole. ”
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(Edited by Ayuko Tokiwa)
Source: BusinessInsider
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