A leaked document obtained by Business Insider and published on Wednesday reveals how Amazon ended up listing thousands of jobs that did not exist.
According to the document, Amazon’s rapid growth from an online bookseller to a multi-billion dollar retail and logistics business led the company to hire too quickly, and too aggressively. In a bid to remain competitive in the job market, Amazon began to inflate job listings.
Specifically, the document cites issues with Amazon’s hiring model, which prioritizes speed over quality. This was compounded by a short-term approach to staffing, which led to many positions being filled before the company had completed a thorough enough search to find the right candidates.
With a lack of verified data, it appears that Amazon gave too much preference to speed over diligence, which saw itend up over-listing up to 20% of jobs, which caused hiring and labour costs to spiral out of control. The document states that this rapid, unplanned hiring has lead to a situation where many of the company’s roles could have been filled by more entry-level applicants, or with more junior staff.
The report also identified some of the changes Amazon has since been making to the process in order to better manage the scale of its hiring. These have included changes to the recruitment model, more active screening of resumes and job profiles, greater investment in automation and AI tools, and the use of external auditors for better background checks.
Ultimately, the document provides a troubling insight into the risks associated with Amazon’s scaling up within a shorter period of time. It remains to be seen if its current efforts to redress these issues will be effective in avoiding over-listing jobs in the future.
