How Amazon Raised the Bar on Recruiting Talent | John Vlastelica
Today, in the Invent Like An Owner Podcast, Dave speaks with John Vlastelica to talk about how Amazon scaled recrui...
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How Amazon Raised the Bar on Recruiting Talent | John Vlastelica
Today, in the Invent Like An Owner Podcast, Dave speaks with John Vlastelica to talk about how Amazon scaled recruitment. They’ll discuss the origin and impact of the Bar Raiser program, where select employees helped pick top notch applicants, the birth of Making Great Hiring Decisions, Amazon’s behavioral interviewing training, how Matt Round’s MRT was designed for the interviewers not recruiters, and the challenges companies face scaling a high hiring bar.
John Vlastelica joined Amazon in 1998 as the Tech Recruiting Manager and then later became a Director of Recruiting. He helped build out the recruiting organization, programs and infrastructure during his 6 years there for what would become foundational to Amazon’s incredible employee growth.
Episode Resources:
John Vlastelica’s LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnvlastelica/
Consulting and Training from John’s company, Recruiting Toolbox Website and Twitter
- https://recruitingtoolbox.com/
- https://twitter.com/RecruitToolbox
Learn about the pros and cons of Bar Raisers: Barraisers.com - https://go.recruitingtoolbox.com/how-to-raise-the-bar-on-talent
Download the Hiring Manager Maturity Model and Culture of Recruiting Best Practices: https://go.recruitingtoolbox.com/hiring-manager-maturity-model
Find Dave on LinkedIn and Twitter
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/daveschappell/
- https://twitter.com/daveschappell
What to Listen For:
00:00 Intro
01:55 What is the Bar Raiser Program?
08:33 Hiring people that will make the overall team better
10:22 Embedding high hiring standard into every interview process
12:17 Tech teams and non-tech teams have different bar standards
16:34 Amazon’s Interview Training Program - Making Great Hiring Decisions
20:00 The art of behavioral interviewing
25:04 Some of the drawbacks of the Bar Raisers program
28:30 How to scale a high hiring bar
32:43 People want to hire smart folks and they depend on proxies
37:21 Questions and scenarios to raise the bar mentality in the early days
38:48 Spent the last 16 years building Recruiting Toolbox
42:07 Overinvest in your hiring standards early
44:20 Bringing ownership into the recruiting culture
46:53 How John helps companies through Recruiting Toolbox
51:18 MRT shifted recruiting to more pipeline oriented, and allowed feedback on interview feedback, a very amazon thing to do
55:53 Creating a culture of ownership and recruiting ownership
59:03 Advice for CEOs and startups
