How we hire and develop the best talent at Amazon

To find the best talent for technical and non-technical roles, we actively partner with organizations and academic institutions that reach underrepresented communities. Through our unique interview process, which is based on our Leadership Principles, we work to understand the diverse perspectives that candidates from all backgrounds bring to Amazon. Some examples of our efforts to recruit women and underrepresented racial/ethnic minority talent include:

Recruiting from diverse colleges and universities (including Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs), women’s colleges, and tribal colleges) in the U.S.
Hosting hiring fairs and career enrichment summits like Represent the Future, Success is Inclusive, to partner with underrepresented communities around the world.
Bringing college students to Amazon’s campus for programs like the Amazon Finance Diversity Leadership Summit to learn from our finance and accounting leaders, and to interview for finance internships at Amazon.
Partnering with organizations like Grace Hopper Celebration, GEM Consortium Fellows, AfroTech, AnitaB.Org, Lesbians Who Tech, Girls in Tech, AISES, and others.
Creating opportunities for people with disabilities to find success at Amazon, like our silent delivery station in Mumbai, and our partnership with the Northwest Center in Seattle.
Exploring new ways to engage populations of employees, like our all women delivery stations in India, which opened employment and leadership opportunities to women in an area where they were not applying for traditional roles.
Committing to the AARP Employer Pledge for building high performing teams with employees of all ages, and the HBCU Partnership Challenge, to support greater engagement between private companies and HBCUs.

In addition to our hiring efforts, we take a longer term view to provide access to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. We know that there are people who may not have access to education on STEM—the subject areas needed for technical careers. At Amazon, we are investing in building the next generation of technical leaders by providing broader access to STEM education, and empowering adults who want to move into technical careers now. Amazon has committed $50M to support STEM programs for underrepresented communities. Some examples of our programs include:

K-12 Education

Amazon Future Engineer, a comprehensive childhood-to-career initiative to inspire, educate, and train children and young adults from underserved and underrepresented communities to pursue careers in computer science. Amazon aims to inspire more than 10 million kids each year to explore computer science through coding camps and online lessons, fund introductory and Advanced Placement (AP) courses in computer science for over 100,000 young people in 2,000 low-income high schools across the U.S., award 100 students from underserved communities pursuing degrees in computer science with four-year $10,000 annual scholarships, as well as offer internships at Amazon to gain work experience.

Amazon and Code.org have teamed up to introduce basic coding concepts and skills through Hour of Code: Dance Party. This combines coding, music, and dance to break stereotypes about coding and who can learn computer science. Internal teams of volunteers are also working to reach students in low-income and underrepresented communities. In 2018, the Amazon Women in Engineering (AWE) Affinity Group taught the Hour of Code to over 4,000 students. Amazon is donating $10M over the next five years to support Code.org in developing the talented technology and business leaders of tomorrow.

Each year, we host Girls Who Code classrooms, where girls from high schools spend seven weeks at Amazon to gain access to new skills, hear insights from Amazonian leaders, and have the support of their own Amazon mentor. We also partner with organizations like Girls’ Brigade Singapore and Technovation Spain to inspire young girls in tech.

Higher Education

AWS Educate provides free online cloud computing education to over 100,000 students and veterans, thousands of academic institutions, and non-profits around the world, including institutions serving racial/ethnic minorities and women. Globally, students or veterans can login to the platform and begin a Cloud Career Pathway, and then have access to jobs and internships within the Amazon Web Services (AWS) customer and partner community.

AWS Academy provides free access to educational resources and curriculum for faculty and institutions seeking to be on the cutting edge of technology education. The Academy works to prepare students for AWS Training and Certification, and is partnering with institutions in 30+ countries.

Amazon’s Student Programs offer internships across Amazon’s business units and look for interns through campus organizations like the National Society of Black Engineers, the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, Society of Women Engineers, American Indian Science and Engineering Society, and others.

Non-traditional pathways

AWS partners with Digital Divide Data to train low-income young people in Kenya for their AWS technical certification, and is partnering with Intel and students to digitize artifacts from the National Museum of Kenya.

We are building programs that provide education and on-the-job training for technical roles to people without traditional technical backgrounds. This includes programs like the Amazon Veteran Technical Apprenticeship that offers intensive classroom training and on-the-job, paid apprenticeships with Amazon over several months.

Amazon’s Tech U Program is an accelerated career development program for new graduates who want to advance their skills and help customers design flexible and resilient cloud-based solutions. The residency program includes a six-month academic curriculum followed by three to six months of experiential learning in the field. Participants learn from top AWS subject matter experts and get paid while they train for an exciting career working with AWS’s customers.

Amazon also hosts policy fellows from the U.S. Bipartisan Congressional Black and Hispanic Caucuses, and attends their Annual Legislative Conferences each year.