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Hi.
I'm Tara Sinclair, chief economist of Indeed.
I'm here in Seattle, Washington today
to speak with Susan Harker, Amazon's vice president
of global talent acquisition.
Susan, it is so great to be able to talk with you today.
Obviously, Amazon has been very successful in attracting
tech talent.
And so I'd love to start out just by asking you,
first of all, what Amazon's philosophy is in terms
of hiring and in terms of being able to attract that top tech
talent.
You know, I think it's a technology company.
So it has some attraction in and of itself.
But also, the thing that I hear the most often
from our interns, or when people first get here
that maybe was a little unexpected for them,
is that they get a lot of ownership
over what they're doing.
They have a broader scope to their initial roles
than they have experienced elsewhere.
And so I think that's what our primary attraction is, is they
get to work on very hard, challenging problems,
but they get a lot of ownership.
They're not working on just one little piece of code
in a much, much broader--
they get to work more end to end.
And they really like that.
So I think it's the right place for people who want
to learn a lot, be challenged--
you know-- all the time, and have a lot of really thorny
hard problems to solve.
Because those are the ones that are
pioneering and groundbreaking for customers.
So how do you communicate that to a new potential recruit?
You know, I think that's the--
I think we need to get better and better at it,
because honestly, you experience that when you come here
as an intern or as an employee.
It's a harder thing to portray in soundbites.
So I think it's having them talk to alumnus,
helping utilize a network of people
who have done internships at the company
or have worked at the company or do work at the company.
And really, hearing what people's true experiences
are working here is the best way to do it.
And we're doing some things from an employer branding
perspective in terms of putting out--
we have a campaign right now called Beyond the Badge.
And it's people just doing short clips
of interviews about their work experience at Amazon.
So it's just very authentic.
You know, here's my take on it.
And I think the best employer brand, if you will,
is what people's actual experience is.
I'd like to transition a little bit into some of the insights
that we're seeing in our data and try and get your
write your response to that.
One of the key things we wanted to look at in this report
is the role of location in both from the employer perspective,
as well as from the job-seeker perspective.
And one thing we were really kind of expecting to see
is we know that tech needs are just
expanding to all over the country, all over the globe,
and to all different sorts of companies.
And so your competition isn't just
other employers here in Seattle.
It's throughout the country in all different sorts
and types of opportunities.
But one thing that really struck me in our data
when I was looking at this, is that job seekers are still
very locally focused on a few main cities.
And particularly, here in the US, now of course, Seattle
is one of them.
Are you guys seeing a similar pattern in terms of difficulty
in attracting talent outside of Seattle?
Or do you take advantage, particularly
of being here in Seattle?
Both.
I think a lot of people--
it's very hard to get people out of the Bay Area
if you're graduating from a Cal school
or you're living and working in the Bay Area.
That's kind of-- it's like being a--
going into investment banking but not going to New York.
So the Bay Area is a very big pool.
So location is always an issue.
I mean, location, if you look at the people who
declined offers, very frequently,
for almost any company no matter where you are,
location is going to be an issue if someone has to move.
And so I think Seattle has become a lot more attractive
of a location for people because not
only with the growth of Amazon, but we have Microsoft.
And you know, I get asked a lot, with having
companies like Facebook and Google and Alibaba coming in,
is that a bad thing?
I think it's a good thing, because I
think it's making us more of a tech center that
makes it a lot easier to attract people to Seattle.
And the thing about Seattle is once they come here,
they don't want to leave because it's just--
it's a great quality of life.
But location is definitely a factor.
And if you really want to be in Boston
or you really want to be in the Bay Area,
we do have opportunities for technical talent
in both those locations and in a number of locations.
And I think we have to view technical talent
as a global talent pool.
But there's a lot of constraints to that talent pool.
The H-1B visa cap is the biggest constraint.
There's also people who just want
to have that experience in the Bay Area,
or they don't want to leave New York.
And so, you know, location is definitely
going to be a factor for any candidate who
has to make a move.
But I do think that we're not asking
them to move to a location just not known for tech.
I mean, Seattle's pretty well known for tech talent.
Right.
It was actually one of the reasons
that Jeff picked Seattle to have be Amazon's headquarters,
because it was a good location for technical talent
as well as transportation and other variables that
made a lot of sense for launching
a company like Amazon.
Thinking globally in terms of outside the US,
what are some key locations you're
seeing are other agglomerations of tech talent?
Well, there's-- one of the things we're doing is studying
what types of tech talent are clustered where.
And so we've done a fair amount of research on that.
And what we're trying to do more and more
is strategically site locations where there already
are clusters of talent.
So being thoughtful and more strategic about where
we place a site and where there are clusters of talent
and there's an opportunity there.
And generally, there's a good education system and university
system that can feed that talent.
The problem with having just a whole lot of scattered sites
is if you don't reach critical mass in a location,
it's harder to have new and different opportunities
or experiences.
So rather than just try to spread everywhere,
we try to be very thoughtful about where can we
build a location that's going to give a lot of opportunity
for people to have different experiences and career
advancement without being forced to come to headquarters.
One thing we've also seen in our data
is that even though we do see clusters of talent,
and oftentimes, like you said, with Seattle or with the Bay
Area, once they get there, they don't want to leave.
And there is that evidence.
But we also see that there are certain areas globally,
as well as within the US, where job seekers are very
keen to move to those areas.
And so the tech talent actually looks bigger
than the numbers you see if you just look
at current populations there.
We actually want to explore beyond
and look at who's looking to move in those cities.
But it does look like there is that pattern that you're
talking about, where we're just seeing a lot of clustering
around a set of skills.
And we're kind of thinking that perhaps it
is more than just other job opportunities in the area.
That seems to be part of the driver,
but then it seems like once we get a critical mass of people,
that there's also--
they have other overlapping interests
that they see filling in in those cities where--
Where are the ones you see people most excited
about migrating to?
Well, so, we split up into two different bits.
We looked at it the US and then we looked globally.
And really, the one globally that
is both a surprise and not at all a surprise is London.
Mm-hmm.
We tend to think of London as a finance hub,
but they've done a great job of tying that in with tech.
And it's well beyond just about population anymore.
They're a big city, so there's going
to be lots of opportunities there.
But even if we control for population,
there's still lots of tech interest in London.
And you think about, going back to the H-1B visa issue,
London can pool from the entire EU, which gives them
additional options for attracting talent,
whereas we, each year, quickly run into challenges with that
here in the US.
Although we've seen from previous reports
and we're seeing again, when we looked at the data this time,
that still, tech talent wants to be in the US.
And they want to be in a few key areas.
They want to be in the Bay Area, and then
less so, Seattle and Austin are the other.
One other thing that we're really
seeing from a lot of job seekers is
that they're interested in remote and work-from-home
options.
And on the other hand, when I've spoken with other employers,
it can sometimes be a challenge because you
do want those collisions between different people
to come up with new creative ideas.
Are you working in that area at all,
trying to balance the benefits of having them together
versus allowing job seekers the flexibility to work from home
or have a remote position?
You know, I think it depends on where you are in the cycle.
Because if you're doing scrums together, you can't be remote.
So I think there are types of work that absolutely
can be done from home.
But I think for what I hear more is
it's less about I want to be at home
and it's more about I want some flexibility.
And I think flexibility is important.
And so I think there needs to be--
managers need to have the judgment
to be clear about what work can be done and makes
sense to be done from home, and when
people need to be working together doing
scrum and things like that.
There's a lot of team dynamic in development.
And being able to be part of the brainstorming,
you're a team participant in a scrum, is very important.
On the other hand, if you're doing
a solo task that requires a lot of concentration,
why not do that from home?
So I think different people have different views on that.
Some people feel very strongly, you
got to be together as a team.
And some people feel less strongly about that.
But what I hear more often is just
having some flexibility and less I just
want to work from home all the time.
No, that's exactly what we're seeing in our data as well,
is that these are often proxies for flexibility generally,
and that does seem to be something that particularly,
for talent that is in demand, you have to think about ways
to attract them to your positions
as compared to other positions.
Flexibility seems to be it.
We talk salary, obviously, but beyond that,
location and flexibility seem to be the other two that
really matter.
Well, those are things that are fairly, I think,
common denominators.
But what I find for technical people
matters more than anything is the nature of the work
and the challenge, the types of problems
that they get to work on, the impact that they can have,
the customers that they can touch.
When I talk to developers, and I talk to lots of developers
all the time, that's what they care about.
So I think those other things are
important attributes when you're considering competitive offers.
But I think that that impact, that type of challenge
that they get to work on is really the most important thing
for them.
We've already talked a little bit about this.
But in terms of creative strategies, tech talent,
it's been in demand.
It was a challenge to hire them even
when the unemployment rate in the US was really high.
That's right.
So now it's going to get even harder.
You know, I think there's--
as you pointed out, even when we were in recession,
there was still demand for this talent and competition
for this talent.
And we don't have enough of this talent to meet demand.
So it's going to be competitive.
And unfortunately, I don't see that changing in the near term,
hopefully, in the long term.
So it is what you really have to appeal to what they want to do.
And I think one of the--
there's gimmicky things that people do,
but I think one of the things that's really meaningful
and that I'd like us to get better and better at is doing
a much better job of really understanding
the particular strengths of the person and their motivations
and matching them well, placing them well in a role,
rather than come in and we'll find a spot for you.
But really, really doing a great job of understanding them
and what they're good at and placing them very well
in a role.
And we need to get better at that.
But I don't see anybody doing that exceptionally well.
And I think that's a very meaningful differentiator.
So that's something we're working on.
It does look like for whatever reason,
supply of this sort of talent is well below the demand for it.
And so then, I really want to make this a two part question.
I want to ask you why do you think that is,
and also, you're saying hopefully, in the future,
we're going to be able to bring those together.
And I'd love to know some ideas on how
you think that could happen, and potentially,
what Amazon is trying to do for that longer term
to help develop that talent.
Well, why I think it is, is because it's hard.
So if this work, if this educational curriculum
was easy, there wouldn't be a shortage.
But it's hard.
Engineering programs, STEM fields are academically
very rigorous and challenging.
And they're difficult. So by their very nature,
they winnow out a lot of people.
The answer is a lot more complex,
because I think it takes a confluence of--
I think it involves sociological issues.
I think it involves education issues.
I think it involves just a whole bunch of things
that need to be brought to bear to develop this kind of talent.
It's-- more and more, skilled talent is in demand globally.
And that's just a fundamental shift
in the workforce that's been happening
and will continue to happen.
So I think when I look at public high schools
that only offer an AP computer science
class and no easy way for others to access it,
or when I see the fact that we're not offering computer
science types of education in primary and middle schools,
it's got to start there.
It's got to start with our education system.
But it's a complex problem and there's many dimensions to it,
so there's not a short term easy answer to it, either.
I think there's-- many things need to be brought to bear.
And in terms of where it's going,
you know, hopefully, you know, what
we're trying to do is work with some of the organizations
that I think are really trying to impact this, such as the Ada
Academy and code.org and their Hour of Code,
and Girls Who Code, and NCWIT, and Anita Borg Institute.
So we're trying to partner with and work with organizations
that are focused on this problem to bring talent
to the field that has typically not been coming to the field.
And I think there are longer term investments in education
and societal change that needs to be driven to reflect
a changing workforce.
And that, I don't think we're trying to--
that's going to take governmental, education,
industry kind of working together.
Susan, thank you so much for joining me today.
My pleasure entirely.
I appreciate the invitation.
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