What are Recruiters at Amazon Looking for?

When trying to fill a role, Amazon recruiters are seeking candidates with experience and skills that best match the job description. Amazon recruiters put a massive emphasis on their cultural values called "leadership principles". You will usually be prompted to take an online assessment after applying to a role, usually based on the leadership principles. You are then ranked on your score, often on a scale of 1-5. Recruiters may be especially eager to talk to you if you score highly, and possibly less eager if you did not.

Unlike most companies, Amazon recruiters don't have set closing dates for job openings. Recruiters at other companies have firm closing dates and deadlines for rounds. Recruiters at other companies meet with candidates, then choose the strongest candidates to progress to the next round until a candidate is chosen. Amazon recruiters are different. Amazon recruiters are continually looking at CVs for the same roles and pushing candidates forward in the process. Recruiters stay involved in many rounds at once, not just in one like they would at other companies. Think of Amazon's hiring process as a conveyor belt. Candidates are continually moving through the Amazon hiring process until one is hired.

This unusual conveyor belt process means Amazon recruiters almost never compare candidates. Instead, candidates are assessed by an objective standard. Candidates who meet the objective standard move forward in the process, regardless of the performance of other candidates. This means recruiters are almost never comparing you to other candidates who applied--recruiters are only comparing you to an objective standard.

Recruiters at other companies might have to choose between ten lesser qualified candidates and hire the most qualified because they need the role filled, or have to turn away extremely capable candidates because slightly more qualified candidates applied. Not at Amazon. Amazon recruiters could give fifty candidates an interview, or they could give none. Amazon recruiters treat you as if you are the only candidate for the position. This can make Amazon recruiters more open to connecting than recruiters at other companies.

Unlike many other companies, Amazon is composed of small teams working on different projects. Teams vary tremendously and often have a small "startup" environment. Meaning recruiters may be seeking totally different qualities for different teams. However, Amazon recruiters will always be seeking candidates who display their all-important 14 "leadership principles", no matter the team.

Is Amazon Hiring in 2024?

Amazon is still facing layoffs and a hiring freeze. However, they're still recruiting for select roles on select teams. On LinkedIn, Amazon lists 8,000+ open job postings every month. While not hiring many new roles, Amazon recruiters are still actively trying to fill these empty positions.

Think of Amazon as thousands of small companies. Small teams create different products or services--they're run like startups. While hiring overall may be slow, specific teams may need to fill a new role ASAP.

What are the Different Types of Recruiters at Amazon?

In general, Amazon recruiters you may consider reaching out to include:

• Recruiters
• Hiring managers
• Team members
• Leadership on the specific team you’re interested in joining

When do you meet with recruiters in the interview process?

The Amazon interview process for software engineers has four rounds:

• Round 1: An online Work Style assessment that determines if you align with their leadership principles and display key skills. Most of the assessment is a simulation of how you’d solve common problems at work, like emails and task prioritization.
• Round 2: A phone screen with a team member based on your resume
• Round 3: A phone screen with a coding component (SQL, SAS, R, and Python) and a Market entry case.
• Round 4: An onsite interview consisting of 4-7 sessions. Most commonly, there are 6 sessions: 5 technical interviews and 1 behavioral interview with HR. Technical questions cover things like graph problems, sorting streams of integers, and checking if a given list of words is contained in a magazine. Problems are usually coupled with an analysis of computational complexity and memory trade-offs. Expect "bar raisers", or outside interviewers, to ask questions as well to make sure that you meet Amazon's objective standards.

Other roles have a similar interview process. Since the hiring process begins with a phone screen with an Amazon recruiter, connecting with a recruiter is usually the best way to start the hiring process. While team members may not be actively searching for talent like recruiters, they can still refer you for a role, increasing your odds of getting an interview. That makes connecting with team members a good place to start as well.

Which Recruiter at Amazon Should you Contact?

Sending a cold email to an Amazon recruiter can triple your response rate, based on our fellow’s data. This is especially helpful when applying to big companies like Amazon which can get thousands of applicants per job posting.

You may be tempted to search for Amazon recruiters and hiring managers directly on LinkedIn–but your odds of landing a job at Amazon are best if you reach out to a recruiter who is searching for candidates like you. Recruiters are often seeking very specific talent for very specific roles.

You can start by searching for jobs at Amazon on LinkedIn. The job posting will often include the recruiter who made the post. If there is no recruiter associated with the post, try reaching out to someone on the team or in a leadership position related to that team. For example, if your target role is on the Data Science and Solutions team in Cupertino, reach out to current members of that team. Amazon’s referral bonus pays employees $125-$400 if the candidate they referred is hired. Meaning current Amazon employees have an incentive to give you a referral.

If you can’t find any recruiters, team members, or hiring managers associated with the job postings, then you can search LinkedIn for Amazon recruiters directly–but try to narrow your search to your specific field. If you’re searching for software engineering roles, search for software engineering recruiters. You may also want to search for recruiters who have something in common with you, like an alma mater school or shared home city. These commonalities can make connecting easier.

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How to Find Recruiter's Email Addresses from Amazon?

Once you’ve found an Amazon Recruiter that’s the best fit for your desired role (and applied to the job!), it’s time to reach out. Both email and LinkedIn messages work fine, but recruiters often limit who can contact them via LinkedIn. Your LinkedIn account likely limits how many private messages you can send as well. Cold email has no such restrictions. The Amazon recruiter probably receives far more cold messages via LinkedIn than email–a clear customized email can help you stand out. We’ve found that personalized emails to recruiters triple your response rate.

To find the Amazon recruiter's email from LinkedIn, you can use a Chrome extension like Career Connect. This tool finds the emails of recruiters connected to a job post you’re applying to, then generates an optimized outreach email using AI.

To use Career Connect, just find a job posting you're interested in, then click the extension–you should see several recruiters’ email addresses, as well as a highly personalized email based on the job posting and your resume, ready to be sent.

If Career Connect somehow fails to find any recruiters' emails, you can enter the email manually. The most common email format for Amazon employees is [first name].[last name]@Amazon.com–For example, Jane Doe would have the email janedoe@Amazon.com. Other common email formats include f.last@Amazon.com and first_last@Amazon.com. If you can’t find a recruiter’s email from an extension like Apollo, you can try manually entering their names into these 3 email formats, then bcc the email to all the potential addresses. An extension like NeverBounce can confirm which email is valid.

What are Recruiters Looking for in Terms of Company Culture?

During the interview process, Amazon puts an incredibly strong emphasis on candidates displaying their values, or what Amazon calls, “leadership principles”. Almost all behavioral interview questions are based on their leadership principles. Letting recruiters know that you’re familiar and aligned with Amazon’s values will dramatically improve your odds.

Amazon scores candidates based on their 14 “Leadership Principles” during the interview process. While Amazon is looking for candidates who display all 14 leadership principles, according to Amazon recruiters, Amazon focuses on 5 especially critical principles: 1) Are Right A Lot, 2) Bias for action, 3) Deliver results, 4) Earn trust, 5) Learn and be curious.

Amazon values:

• Are right, a lot: Leaders are right a lot. They have strong judgment and good instincts. They seek diverse perspectives and work to disconfirm their beliefs.
• Bias for action: Speed matters in business. Many decisions and actions are reversible and do not need extensive study. We value calculated risk-taking.
• Customer obsession: Leaders start with the customer and work backward. They work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust. Although leaders pay attention to competitors, they obsess over customers.
• Deliver results: Leaders focus on the key inputs for their business and deliver them with the right quality and in a timely fashion. Despite setbacks, they rise to the occasion and never settle.
• Dive deep: Leaders operate at all levels, stay connected to the details, audit frequently, and are skeptical when metrics and anecdotes differ. No task is beneath them.
• Earn trust: Leaders listen attentively, speak candidly, and treat others respectfully. They are vocally self-critical, even when doing so is awkward or embarrassing. Leaders do not believe their or their team"s body odor smells of perfume. They benchmark themselves and their teams against the best.
• Frugality: Accomplish more with less. Constraints breed resourcefulness, self-sufficiency, and invention. There are no extra points for growing headcount, budget size, or fixed expenses.
• Have backbone; disagree and commit: Leaders are obligated to respectfully challenge decisions when they disagree, even when doing so is uncomfortable or exhausting. Leaders have conviction and are tenacious. They do not compromise for the sake of social cohesion. Once a decision is determined, they commit wholly.
• Hire and develop the best: Leaders raise the performance bar with every hire and promotion. They recognize exceptional talent and willingly move them throughout the organization. Leaders develop leaders and take seriously their role in coaching others. We work on behalf of our people to invent mechanisms for development like Career Choice.
• Insist on the highest standards: Leaders have relentlessly high standards - many people may think these standards are unreasonably high. Leaders are continually raising the bar and driving their teams to deliver high-quality products, services, and processes. Leaders ensure that defects do not get sent down the line and that problems are fixed so they stay fixed.
• Invent and simplify: Leaders expect and require innovation and invention from their teams and always find ways to simplify. They are externally aware, look for new ideas from everywhere, and are not limited by what’s invented here. As we do new things, we accept that we may be misunderstood for long periods of time.
• Learn and be curious: Leaders are never done learning and always seek to improve themselves. They are curious about new possibilities and act to explore them. Ownership: Leaders are owners. They think long-term and don't sacrifice long-term value for short-term results. They act on behalf of the entire company, beyond just their own team. They never say that's not my job".
• Think big: Thinking small is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Leaders create and communicate a bold direction that inspires results. They think differently and look around corners for ways to serve customers.

Once you’re familiar with Amazon’s values, you can include a sentence or two about how you and your experiences might align with their values. Don’t force it–you’ll have time to demonstrate your cultural fit in the interview. But if your experiences align with their values, you can show your recruiter that you did your research and could be a good fit for the culture. Our template includes a generic sentence on accessibility, but you can add another value that may fit you better.

To see interview questions and a more in-depth guide to the interview processes, in our How to get to a job at Amazon guide.

How to Write Cold Emails to Recruiters at Amazon and What to Say

Connecting with recruiters at Amazon is not as easy as sending a generic networking email–effective cold emails should be highly personalized to the company and recruiter. For example, recruiters at Amazon often look for candidates who align with their values of accessibility and inclusion.

If you are not sure what to say, don’t worry. You can use Career Connect to write the perfect email using AI. The tool generates outreach emails tailored to your resume and the job description, then sends them to recruiters. Each sentence of the email is optimized to stand out to recruiters and get you an interview.

If you prefer to manually write the email, we’ve also made you a template customized for recruiters at Amazon. For other companies, you can check out this guide with our cold email template to help you.

When you reach out in your cold emails, you need to hit the right points for your role. Use these tips to ensure you are catching their eye so they move you forward.

• If you’re trying to get a software engineering job at Amazon, make sure you research the programming languages that they use and highlight your expertise in each one.
• To become a UX designer at Amazon, make sure your portfolio showcases all of your skills throughout the entire design process.
• When reaching out to get a data science job at Amazon, make sure you mention relevant projects that match the goals of the company.
• If you are aiming to become a digital marketer at Amazon, make sure you quantify the results in your background statements because it is more impressive.
• To become a product manager at Amazon, make sure you research their products heavily and talk about how your background connects to their current work.
• If you’re reaching out to find a sales development representative (SDR) at Amazon, make sure you focus on how you approach your funnels differently and why you are the right fit for this specific team.

Amazon Cold Email Template

You can use our template to send strong cold emails along with your applications.

Hi [recruiter name],

[Personal greeting and intro]. [Include reason for reaching out].

[Insert interest in Amazon’s product/values/mission and a follow up statement tying in your background]. [insert any other relevant background information - tie it into the job description].

[Tie interest in company and background into a closing statement]. [End with an ask to connect or to move forward in the process].

Best, [Your name]

Here is the template filled out so you can get a sense for how to do it yourself:

Hi Jane Doe,

I recently applied for the Data Scientist role on LinkedIn–I noticed you’re a recruiter at Amazon seeking data talent. While I’m not sure if you are the right person to contact, I definitely have the experience and skills the team is seeking.

As a Math major, I’ve taken the time on the side to perfect my code to analyze data problems. I’ve worked on 10+ data projects focusing on data cleaning, visualization, and prediction models using machine learning, neural networks, and topic modeling.

My data cleaning as a Microsoft intern fixed 60+ cross-set errors and helped the strategy team make a marketing pivot–I can see myself leveraging those experiences to scale the data mountain at Amazon. Working cross-functionally taught me to visualize data clearly and concisely, which I think makes the perfect fit for Amazon’s leadership principle of “earn trust”.

I’m sure you’re very busy, but I would appreciate the opportunity to hop on a quick call to learn more about the role and team. Would you be free for a 15-minute call on Monday after 10am or any day after Wednesday?

Best, John Doe

With recruiter email addresses and cold email templates at your disposal, you should be on your way to more application responses and interview requests.

AI Generated Cold Email

Our extension can write the email for you. Using your resume and the job description, our extension generates a personalized email to the recruiter. Not only does our app save time, but every sentence of our email is written based on our hiring data to be as effective as possible. Each email is tailored to the role and recruiter.