Most traditional companies spend enormous amounts of money and effort in recruiting, developing, and retaining talent, and yet still encounter huge difficulty in finding the right people and deploying them in the right jobs. Take recruiting for example, where many companies lack specific standards, and even if there are standards, they will easily give way to the pressing business urgency.
Amazon’s talent pool is carefully defined, meticulously documented, and rigorously chosen; and coupled with complete end-to-end follow- through and feedback to ensure continuous bar-raising, both for the talent pool itself and for the self-reinforcing mechanism of talent acquisition and retention.
In all interviews, Amazon includes a designated and trained person known as the “bar-raiser.” They ensure that the hire is a fit for Amazon’s culture and its continuous bar-raising.