Amazon Recruiters are often asked to fill roles with which they are unfamiliar. How do you approach learning complex job titles and terminology for positions that are new to you?
The interviewer wants evidence that you are a resourceful individual who can recruit for a vast range of open roles across numerous departments. The goal of your response is to prove to the interviewer that you have the tenacity and resourcefulness, along with the research chops necessary to learn about job functions that may be unfamiliar to you.
Amazon has dozens of teams listed on its careers page, all with a range of open job opportunities. It can be a challenge to keep up with all industry terminology. A great Recruiter will have a genuine appreciation for gathering research and obtaining new knowledge.
Some of your best research resources will include online searches, industry-specific forums, job-specific podcasts, and researching the job descriptions posted by competing companies with similar job openings. You might even want to go online and find people with job titles that align with the one you're looking to build a talent pipeline for. You can find similar people on LinkedIn and take note of their education, career progression, and accountabilities.
As an Amazon Recruiter, you will learn about jobs and skillsets that you may not have even known existed! Show the interviewers that you have an attitude of receptiveness and you are ready to learn. Discuss how you approach learning industry terminology for roles that are new to you.
If you have a story of a specific time when you encountered this situation, provide a real-life example of when you filled the knowledge gap and overcame the challenge.
"In my current recruitment role with Company XYZ, we hire many professionals for our growing core engineering team. I am often asked to start building a talent pipeline for a job title that is new to me. For instance, last month, one of the department managers asked me to source a Games Ecosystems Solutions Engineer. I took the job details, conducted research, and read a few tech-related forums online. It turned out that this was a title that essentially described a Full Stack Engineer. I began by researching competing companies with large Full Stack Engineering teams. Then, I began my talent reach-outs from that starting point. If hired as an Amazon Recruiter, I will apply this same desire to learn and understand. If I am unsure of a particular job function or credential, I will analyze and explore until I fully understand the exact skills I need to uncover in my search."
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