They’re calling it ‘Amazon Jobs Day’. Next week, to keep up with demand, the ecommerce giant will be holding a massive recruitment event across 10 cities to ensure that they have enough staff in key locations. They have 50k vacancies. 40k of the jobs will be full time and offer what Amazon terms “highly-competitive wages” and 10k will be part time. Amazon says they plan to hire 100k people by the middle of next year in total.
The new positions are at the Amazon fulfilment centres (FCs). New staff will be involved with picking and packing and fulfilling orders.
Amazon’s John Olsen says: “These are great opportunities with runway for advancement. In fact, of our entry level managers across Amazon’s U.S. fulfillment centers, nearly 15% started in hourly roles and were promoted into their current positions.”
And they’re not hanging around. Anyone who is interested in a position should present themselves to a relevant fulfilment centre next week on the 2nd of August for ‘Amazon Jobs Day’ between 8am and noon. They will be given tours and shown what the job involves by existing Amazon staff. Amazon says it will “make thousands of on-the-spot job offers to qualified candidates” on the day.
The fulfilment centres in these cities will be taking applicants for full time work: Baltimore in Maryland; Chattanooga, Tennessee; Etna, Ohio.; Fall River, Massachusetts; Hebron, Kentucky; Kenosha, Wisconsin; Kent, Washington state; Robbinsville in New Jersey; Romeoville, Illinois and Whitestown, Indiana. Oklahoma City and Buffalo, New York will be hiring part timers only.
This is a very bold and ambitious way of approaching recruitment that shows confidence. Clearly the company is going great guns (that much we knew) but in advance of Black Friday and Christmas 2017 they will need lots of new staff. Making it an ‘event’ is smart and will doubtless be successful. It seems likely that they will be overwhelmed with applicants.
