A recent Wall Street Journal Article, Amazon’s Current Employees Raise the Bar for New Hires, describes Amazon’s highly attentive interviewing process for new senior hires. All candidates must interview with a slate of “bar raisers,” tough interviewers who probe deeply for weaknesses and for compatibility with Amazon’s needs in the open position. It is clear that the Amazon recruiting process is both time consuming and labor intensive. What’s interesting is that Amazon appears not to use personality assessments as part of the recruiting process.
Successful contributors in today’s workplace need to exhibit the right behaviors as well as the right knowledge and skills. Underlying these behaviors are abilities and personality traits that are not easy to evaluate through interviews. Assessments, however, based on comparisons with the behaviors of high performers in the open role are extremely reliable at predicting whether the candidate possesses the necessary abilities and personality traits. For example Bizet Asset Management’s Activity Vector Analysis (AVA) assessment is extremely accurate at profiling the behaviors of high performers in a role and comparing them with expected behaviors of candidates.
Amazon has a real opportunity to streamline and improve its recruiting process by conducting fewer interviews and instead using highly predictive behavioral assessments like the AVA.
