“We rely heavily on employee referrals”

Interview of the Day: “We rely heavily on employee referrals”

Raj Raghavan, Country HR Director, Amazon India

How important is the role of a diverse workforce in Amazon’s business in India? 

It’s very important!  Amazon has been in India since 2004, supporting global technology and operations. Ever since, we have always had a diverse workforce. A diverse workforce is integral to the growth of the company and the growth of the economy. It fosters new ways of thinking, innovation and reaching out to a wider range of customers and growing your business.

How diverse is your workforce?

We have women leaders who run categories, businesses, technology teams and hold leadership positions at Amazon. Gender diversity brings ‘Diversity in Thought’ and that’s important for a balanced leadership. At the recently concluded Grace Hopper Conference in Bangalore, world’s largest conference of technical women, 25 of our women leaders, who are technology experts and engineers, participated.

What are the various best practices you employ to keep your workforce motivated and engaged?

Amazon has a culture that inculcates “Ownership”. We don’t think skills forward, we think customer backwards. And that is the predominant way in which we engage with our people. We build capabilities and learn skills based on customer needs.

We have a global customer connections program that mandates all managers to spend 2 days in a year resolving customer questions on telephone e-mails. This helps managers across the organisation aware of the pulse of the consumer.

At Amazon, we encourage an owner-driven work environment, in which our employees can make decisions, so that they are quick and nimble. We are not bureaucratic. We don’t have huge layers of management.

We practice a mentorship program where every new employee is allocated a Buddy, who mentors/ guides and inducts them into the culture of the organisation. This buddy is someone you can go to for advice. He/she is like your sounding board. Such a program helps employees to engage and learn a lot from their seniors.

You must have an extensive warehousing and logistics set up. What are the challenges you face while sourcing a workforce for this set up?

Our warehouses are called Fulfillment Centers. We have a very high hiring bar and to meet that bar and clearing it, is challenging in itself.

At Amazon, we want to hire superstars! We want the existing employees to feel proud of the hire we have made, so that they look forward to working with that person and feel motivated to learn from that person. To hire great talent is fun, but at the same time it’s challenging too.

How do you generally source your employees?

We have a large sourcing team internally. Besides that, we rely heavily on employee referrals and we have a robust employee referral programme.

We also make use of social channels such as LinkedIn to source people. In specific cases we also use expert consultancy services to find the right people.

Is a candidate, aspiring to join Amazon, required to have degrees from only the elite and premier institutes? How can competent candidates from not-so renowned institutes be a part of Amazon?

At Amazon, we believe that education is just one of the components that make up a suitable candidate and his/her performance and experience on the job is the key. We select people from various engineering and management institutes across the country. We ourselves go to a variety of colleges and B-schools to reach out to potential candidates. We don’t have a bias towards any particular institute.

What is future roadmap for Amazon in terms of human capital? 

The three words that really define us and will continue to define our future are – ‘Hire’, ‘Keep’ and ‘Grow’. This is something I have always maintained and keep reiterating to my team. 

Will 2014 be a good year for candidates aspiring to make a mark in e-commerce sector?

E-commerce industry in India is still growing and evolving. We see a huge opportunity in the country and that is why we are here. Amazon in India has its marketplace, www.amazon.in; we have Amazon Web Services that provides Amazon’s developer customers with access to in-the-cloud infrastructure services and Kindle. We offer all three services here in India. I think it’s going to be a great 2014 for product technologies segment wherein e-commerce will be the most popular.

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