Quick Tip: Takeaways from Amazon Career Day

Amazon recently hosted their annual Career Day that was fully virtual with over 1,000 recruiters helping job seekers. The company announced 33,000 open job positions with corporate and tech workers having an average salary of $150,000.

In this quick tip episode, I cover the top three takeaways from the day: how job seekers are currently feeling, how to stand out as an applicant, and optimizing your resume for the Applicant Tracking System (ATS).

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Automated Transcript

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Editor's Note: We provide a transcript of each episode to make it easy to search and read. Since robots are not ready to take over the world yet, the artificial intelligence isn't perfect. There may be some typos in the automated transcript.

Vincent Phamvan (00:01):
From Vyten career coaching. It's how I got here. A show about business leaders, their resilience and the stories behind their career moves. I'm Vincent Phamvan, and I've interviewed thousands of job candidates over the years in both recruiting and as a former corporate executive.

Now I'm on a mission to help you take the next step in your career. A corporate job opening attracts an average of 250 resumes, and just one person is going to get hired. It wasn't all that long ago that I was nervous and frustrated by my job search, but it doesn't have to be this way.

You can navigate your career with confidence, spend everyday learning and drive to better yourself. You can be excited about the future.

All right, let's jump right in here. This is a quick tip. Friday episode is a new type of episode that we're going to do covering actionable strategies, mindsets, and tips that will help you take your next career move.

Vincent Phamvan (00:54):
All right, so last week, Amazon hosted their annual career day, and this is what this year, Amazon went virtual with their career day, obviously. So they had over a thousand recruiters offering 20,000 different coaching sessions, and they announced that they Amazon currently hiring 33,000 different job openings. So this big 33,000 different job openings that Amazon currently has opened.

And you know, these roles have a minimum wage of at least $15 per hour. And that comes with 20 weeks of parental leave, which is huge for hourly roles, but for corporate roles for tech roles, there's an average pay of $150,000, including salary stock other benefits. And it's not a bad stock to own. It's not a bad stock to own and full disclosure here.

I am an Amazon shareholder and the stock is up 77% over last year. But you know, there are three major takeaways that I had from career day that I wanted to share on this quick tip episode, whether you're interested in a job at Amazon or whether you're interested in our job at a different organization.

Vincent Phamvan (01:59):
These takeaways from career day can be very, very helpful. So the first one is like, how do people feel right now? How do other job seekers feel right now?

Whether you're a job seeker right now, or whether you're employed 25% of the U S workforce is actively applying for new jobs right now. So some of those people are employed. Some of those people are furloughed.

Some of those are folks are unemployed, but a fourth one out of every four Americans is actively applying for a new job. Half of those people that are applying for a new job said that this was a result of COVID. So it's not entirely pandemic related.

There's a group of people, even outside of the pandemic who are looking for new roles. And what was fascinating is 61% of people looking for a new job said that they're looking to change industries or pivot their careers.

Vincent Phamvan (02:53):
This makes a lot of sense. If you were previously in hospitality previously in transportation or travel it might be time to look at healthcare or other industries that are either flat or continuing to grow in spite in, during a pandemic 62% of job seekers felt a high level of insecurity and you know, the biggest impact I started working from home in March this year, a lot of people started working from home.

I used to commute every single day to an office. I used to drive or, you know, bike to an office every single day. And 76% of people are feeling higher levels of loneliness. And I can definitely understand this.

And even, I, you know, I've, I've felt this way, working from home, you just, you just have less interaction with other people. And it's just not quite entirely the same when you're on a video call.

Vincent Phamvan (03:45):
So that was kind of takeaway number one, how are other people how are people feeling right now? Takeaway number two is how to stand out to recruiters. You know, at the top of each one of my episodes, I share on average 250 people apply for every corporate job posting that's posted out there.

And just one person that's going to get hired. But during the pandemic, Amazon, and a lot of the recruiters that I'm talking to are saying that this number is now two X, three X, four X, five X. I had one recruiter.

I talked to about a top employer recently telling me that they can literally put a posting out there. And within hours, within days, they have thousands of applicants for that role. And they're able to pull the roll down because they have the applicant pool.

So the question is, is how do you stand out?

Vincent Phamvan (04:26):
How do you, how do you end up being that top candidate? One of these, you know, future 33,000 people at AMA that are going to start working at Amazon, how do you stand out? And what was interesting here was their number one takeaway was the same thing as the last previous episode.

If you listened to that one, Sarah from Tesla shared that Tesla really wants people to know and understand and be bought in and be part of Tesla's mission. And they put that on the Tesla careers page, and Amazon actually talks about the same thing.

They want candidates to know the 14 different leadership principles at Amazon. And they want candidates to be familiar with these leadership principles because, you know, once you join Amazon, these are the leadership principles that you're going to abide by if you're going to fit into their culture. And so in the past where it might've been optional to incorporate this into your interview, answers to incorporate this into and show that you've done this research in the past, that might have been optional.

But now what we're hearing from top employers is that's no longer optional. That's necessary to stand out in a competitive job seeker market, and the top candidates are doing this. So if you want to be an above average candidate, if you want to be one of the top candidates, I share all the time, average effort into your job search average results. And in the job market that we have right now, you have to be above that.

Speaker 2 (05:47):
You have to be the teacher

Vincent Phamvan (05:49):
Candidate to be able to start that job. And this is part of what plays into that is doing the research, showing the employers that you've done, the, you understand their mission, you understand their leadership principles, and that you're incorporating that into your answers to show how you are not only a good fit, but a great fit, the best fit to be the next person to start the job there.

The other thing that came out loud and clear in this, how to stand out to recruiters is that interview questions are based on real life examples. So, you know, behavioral interview questions.

Tell me about a time where yada, yada yada, the detailed answers that show that you've prepared different stories, and those stories have to show how you've made an impact and how you deliver value to an employer. This came out loud and clear in Amazon's career data.

Vincent Phamvan (06:39):
These are the types of answers that really, really stand out. And so if you're not familiar with the star method, S T a R situation task action result, you know, do a quick Google search. But these are the types of answers that are really standing out.

And the last one last key takeaway takeaway number three is resume optimization, applicant tracking systems matter, right? Because if employers like Amazon are getting thousands of applicants, so, you know, think 33,000 open roles, that's a lot of open roles, right? Over a thousand recruiters, 33,000 open roles, thousands of candidates per,

Vincent Phamvan (07:19):
Okay.

Vincent Phamvan (07:19):
These applicant tracking systems are going to analyze applications and resumes before a human reviews. It because it's not possible for a human to review every single resume. So over 70% of resumes submitted are analyzed by this applicant tracking system, before a human ever reviews it.

And so having the right skills, having the right keywords end up really mattering, and the applicants who stand out right now are the ones who are focused on upskilling, especially if you're one of the I'm going to go back in my notes here. One of the 61% of people who are looking to pivot industries or pivot their careers, you have to upskill in order to be able to do that, gain more skills that match the job description, right?

So if you're not sure what skills to look at, you can look at the job description to see what skills are necessary, what experiences are necessary.

Vincent Phamvan (08:09):
And then you're checking the job description and matching these skills. So that, that way it's a fit with the applicant tracking system works the same way. When recruiters are doing searches on LinkedIn, you want to be able to match these.

You can also be smart about where you invest in the skills. And so essential research said the highest in demand areas right now are cloud computing, robotics, process automation, and statistical analysis. So if you pick one of these areas, you know that you're going to get an ROI on learning that skill, because it's going to be an high demand skill.

And there'll be a lot of job postings in the future in these particular areas. Anyway, those are the three quick tip takeaways from Amazon career day, how people are feeling right now, how to stand out to, and how to optimize your resume for applicant tracking systems.

Vincent Phamvan (08:59):
All right, let's go get them.

Hey, before we go, I'm super excited about this. I'm going to start sharing short, actionable career tips through my new telegram channel every single day. If this quick tip episode was helpful for you, you can actually get bite-sized career tips and strategies directly from me directly from my cell phone to your cell phone every single day, by joining my free telegram channel.

If you're stuck in your job search, if you're unsure of your next career move, if you're unsure how to stand out so that you can take your next career move, you should join because I felt this way in the past too. But then I became an insider on the other side of the table. I found out what it was like to screen thousands of applications.

I found out what it was like to hire hundreds of new hires as a hiring manager. And now I want to share everything that I've learned with you. And so join my free Vyten Insider Telegram channel.

Click the link in the show notes, or go to www.vyten.com/insider That's V-Y-T-E-N dot com slash insider