At Amazon, we hold each other and ourselves accountable for demonstrating the Leadership Principles through our actions every day. Our Leadership Principles describe how Amazon does business, how leaders lead, and how we all make decisions on behalf of our customers. While our Principles have evolved over time, they remain true to the values we've held since Day 1.
We’re happy to have interviewed Georgina Yellowlees director of talent acquisition, Ops HR, who explains which of Amazon’s 14 Leadership Principles are particularly important to her in her job and how they shape her daily work:
I joined Amazon in 2012 and I was amazed to see how the Leadership Principles are living – they are not just written on the wall. All 14 leadership principles are incredibly important, I will speak about "Customer Obsession" (Business or Candidate) and “Hire and Develop the Best”.
My team’s customers are internal and external talents, as well as our business partners. We have multiple goals, but I will highlight "delight candidates". We believe candidates should be treated as customers. Similar to the business, we then work back from the candidate to understand the data and how that impacts our process.
We review how to attract talent, using market demographics and competitor analysis, and how we assess individuals. Talent is our most important resource, and it is a highly competitive marketplace. We are challenging ourselves to use data, to question and innovate how we engage and attract the future leaders of Amazon in a more efficient and quality driven manner.
Amazon is an equal opportunity employer, we are focused on creating access to diverse talent. We review our employee base and make sure we also represent our customer base and local populations throughout. And customers are women and men, from all over the world, from various religions, sexual orientations, physical abilities.
My team is of utmost importance to me. One of the key focus is their continuous development, both professionally and personally.
With ‘Hire and Develop the Best’, I expect my team to be the best business partner and talent adviser that they can be. As I build my team, I am not just hiring recruitment professionals, but also those with strong business acumen from different disciplines. By diversifying our skill sets and expertise, we have increased our ability to collaborate and business partner better, delivering quality results in a timely manner.
My final words of advice, which do flow through all our leadership principals:
- Be inspired by being uncomfortable and challenged by change
- Take risks, take advantage of two-way door decisions
- Understand data to question and devise insightful solutions
- Lean in and embrace ambiguity
- Learn continuously
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