Analysis of Employee Recruitment Challenges at Amazon: Strategies

This report provides an in-depth analysis of the employee recruitment challenges encountered by Amazon, a prominent e-commerce company. The report highlights key issues such as the overwhelming number of online applicants, the challenge of retaining employees, demographic considerations, and the limitations of relying solely on online communication during interviews. It further explores the strategies Amazon can implement to address these challenges, including focusing on employee retention and motivation through competitive compensation and professional development, conducting thorough job assessments to identify required skills and competencies, utilizing effective search engines to identify qualified candidates, and building a strong organizational brand and culture. The report emphasizes the importance of a proactive and adaptable recruitment approach in order for Amazon to secure a skilled and committed workforce, which is crucial for its continued success in a competitive market. The report concludes by stressing the importance of the human resource department in the recruitment process and the need to carefully determine the best way to recruit employees, whether internally or externally, to reduce costs and improve efficiency.

Running Head: EMPLOYEE RECRUITMENT
Challenges Amazon’s Employee Recruitment
Student’s Name:
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CHALLENGES OF EMPLYEE RECRUITMENT IN AMAZON 2
Executive Summary
Due to the continuing trend of hiring staffs, most of the new era companies face
challenges in conducting their employee recruitment especially the online organizations. Most of
the job advertisement and the job tasks are always online making them more challenging than
others. The article discusses the challenges faced by organizations Amazon in their staff
recruitment such as a large number of online applicants, undecided employees, and the
insufficient of face-to-face communication during a job interview and demographic issues. The
strategies that should be put in place to combat the challenges such as job retention and
motivation, creation of strong organization brand and culture, career assessment and proper
valid applicants search engines.

CHALLENGES OF EMPLYEE RECRUITMENT IN AMAZON 3
Table of Contents
Executive Summary.........................................................................................................................2
Introduction......................................................................................................................................4
High number of online applicants....................................................................................................5
Undecided employees......................................................................................................................5
Demographic issues.........................................................................................................................5
Unavailability of face to face communication.................................................................................6
Retention and motivation.................................................................................................................7
Job assessment.................................................................................................................................8
Proper Valid search Engines............................................................................................................8
Organization brand and culture.......................................................................................................9
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................9
References......................................................................................................................................10

CHALLENGES OF EMPLYEE RECRUITMENT IN AMAZON 4
Introduction
As the job market continues to grow, diversity of job seekers grow in return calling for
selective recruitment by organizations (Al-Kassem, 2017). Most organizations fail to achieve
their objectives when a wrong selection of employees therefore, it is a major challenge for most
of the today’s business that aims at growing and managing their cost at the same time. Most
companies, therefore always tend to look for diversified qualified employees that are able to
generate constructive ideas and create productivity of the organization. To acquire sufficient,
qualified persons to work in a particular organization employers always depend on proper and
effective process (Munstemann, 2014). The effective process must follow specific stages and laid
channels such as determining the current and future human resource requirement, identification
the potential human resource pool and the competition (Corin & Bjork, 2016).
Most of online companies such Amazon faces a number of challenges during their
employees’ recruitment process (Holm, 2014).Amazon an American E-commerce that started in
1994 is growing globally There are primary factors that influence recruitment of workforce are
such as economic factors, technological change, educational background, the lifestyle of
workers, demographic changes and financial factors that influence the choice of the employees in
the labor market and mobility ,analyzing and evaluating job to identify individual aspects that are
suitable for creating jobs, determination of the organization ability to sustain the recruits and the
documentation (de Chaves et al., 2017). However, the process in Amazon E-commerce faces the
following challenges; high number of online applicants, undecided employees, demographic
issues and unavailability of face-face communication during interview.

CHALLENGES OF EMPLYEE RECRUITMENT IN AMAZON 5
High number of online applicants
Many e-commerce organizations tend to hire individuals that are computer literate and
software developers (Banerjee, 2016). Amazon is an internet-oriented company faces challenges
of the overwhelming number of forwarded resumes. A large number of resumes tend to reduce
the speed of short listing hence making the recruitment process to consume much longer time
than expected. A large number of resumes tend to lock out some potential applicants such as
those that demand confidentiality due to the inadequate screening process carried by some. The
discrimination and the long process tend to make Amazon loose potential candidates to
competitors.
Undecided employees
The constant changing economy makes most people look for more avenues to curb their
economic crisis, making constant job changes that satisfy their needs hence making many
employees to change jobs (Hallberg, 2011). The job unsatisfactory, forces continuous change of
job, making the organizations to lose talented employees hence, calls for frequent recruitment
process. Most of the employees will find a better paying job in the e-commerce organizations
and may not feel contented due to a number of factors such geographical distances, the changing
social life and the technological changes. These constant changes forces Amazon to offer extra
cost on training the new recruits.
Demographic issues
Research shows that there is an increase in the rate of the aging of the workforce and lack
of leader’s development to take over the roles makes the recruitment to be more

CHALLENGES OF EMPLYEE RECRUITMENT IN AMAZON 6
challenging(Madichie & Nyakang’o, 2016). In the Amazon Company, most of the leaders are of
age between 25 years of age and above because they are the most considered as the digital
group. The young age group does not provide enough leadership skills that might be needed due
to inadequate work experience (Oude et al., 2016). As a result it is very difficult to get a
candidate with both the qualifications on education and skills in the new technological issues to
replace the old who are closing to their retirement age.
Unavailability of face to face communication
According to a survey, 60% job applicants, 13% tend to assume to make the online job
opportunity making inadequate applicants pool for the companies to choose from (Ladkin &
Buhalis, 2016). The study also observes that most of the e-commerce companies also still
embrace the face-to-face interview process, therefore making the process of online interview
tiresome as most of the applicants will be required to go through face to face interview process.
Amazon Company making them faces a professional deficit (Banerjee, 2016). The company is
confronted with a low level of qualified applicants for the announced vacancy. The high level of
professional against the small market supply makes the recruitment a significant challenge as
most of the picked staffs end up to be unskilled or unproductive that cause loss to the company at
the end of the program. The untrained or the unproductive workers’ forces the company to go to
extra miles of offering basic training that is costly.
For successful employee recruitment, Amazon E-Commerce has to consider a number of
strategies. The following are Strategies that can be used by Amazon to address the challenges
faced during the staff's recruitment;

CHALLENGES OF EMPLYEE RECRUITMENT IN AMAZON 7
Retention and motivation
Employee retention is the ability of an organization to retain its employees through
proper strategies to ensure that they stay for longer time (Bais, 2012). The employee retention
helps the organizations from carrying out frequent recruitments hence avoids extra costs of
training and the challenges that might be experienced (Parveen & Maimani, 2015). If the new
recruit has knowledge and skills deficiency that are required to perform the specified job, then
training is essential to upgrade their knowledge and expertise to the minimum level required.
Studies indicate that there are all kinds of human capital obsolescence that occur in organizations
and always lower the labor market participation and productivity of the same staffs (Baek &
Cho, 2013). The unavailability of the recruit in the market might be due to some factors such as
the large geographical area and the economic disadvantages forcing the human resource manager
to land to the under skilled.
Due to the continuous changing technology in the globe, college recruitment is one of
better ways of doing recruitment, development and retention for the new digital organizations
(Collins, 2016). It is advantageous as the organization representative can screen the students and
create a good technical applicant’s pool that is technologically oriented. The company should
concentrate on recruiting the college students that offers internship programs that may provide
the organization with quality employees at a low cost per hire.
According to research, concentrating on the employee development, training and
motivation eventually increase the commitment and the production of the organization
(Mikkelsen et al., 2015). A motivated employee tends to work hard, and to the best with
satisfaction and may not opt of looking for another job opportunity since the working
environment will be to their satisfaction. The employee's retention though has become more

CHALLENGES OF EMPLYEE RECRUITMENT IN AMAZON 8
heightened; it is the best way to save more employees the stress of losing the best-skilled staffs
and going the importance of looking a replacement.
Job assessment
Before every firm does recruitment, proper job assessments should always be carried to
help in identifying the skills and competencies required for the position (Wright, 2017). The
process can always be time-consuming and expensive exercises as most of the small companies
tend to concentrate on the formal qualifications. The process will impact the number of people
that are available for a particular job and focus on the quality rather than quantity creating a
natural ground on selecting the best candidate (Sawny & Ladkoo, 2015). The quality recruited
staffs will not require much training and development hence Amazon E-Commerce will have a
reduced cost on that.
Proper Valid search Engines
The Amazon E-Commerce should use appropriate, legitimate search engines such as
Google, Yahoo, HotBot, and GO.com that can sort out candidates actually without
discriminating against any persons or groups(Suwala, 2013). The proper search engine will
ensure that Amazon gets the full list of all applicants and screen them to get the proper list of the
potential candidates that will not pose more cost on training and develop them after the
appointment. The proper search engines and well developed video calls will protect help in
conducting online interview that is personalized; hence the employees have better hand to select
the best candidate for the job.

CHALLENGES OF EMPLYEE RECRUITMENT IN AMAZON 9
Organization brand and culture
Studies show that branding attracts best talents in the labor supply since many people just
long to work in such organization. As a result, there will be always a large pool of applicants that
the company is ready to chose from incase of any need reducing the challenges faced during
recruitment (Jarventie et al., 2011). Amazon being a new organization that is technologically
oriented should aim at strengthening the brand and improving the culture that is comfortable with
the society. Many diverse groups are still conservative in their ways of living even though there
is constant technological growth, as many old and experienced managers are not well conversant
with the social media platforms. It is therefore critical for Amazon to embrace and coach culture
to attract the future to
Conclusion
From the study, employees are the fundamental basics of an organization and proper
selection will ensure continuity of the success. Many developing digital organizations such as
Amazon, faces more recruitment challenges’ than other traditional forms of organizations such
as Hospitality Industry due underdeveloped skills and knowledge among the workforce. The
appointment of such employees poses the company to spend more money in conducting training.
Some companies are experiencing constant growth of workers mainly because they have
practiced the art of retention, motivation, awarding and promotion for a long-term stay of the
workers; this saves them the stress of doing various recruitments. During the hiring, the human
and resource department should take the process carefully, and should always determine whether
to do it internally or externally, where the internal recruitment overrides the external due to the

CHALLENGES OF EMPLYEE RECRUITMENT IN AMAZON 10
already built technological know-how, skills, and the organizational culture. Through that,
Amazon and many others will cut down the cost of training.
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