Jeff Bezos hired potential employee on the spot after asking just two questions in the interview
Jeff Bezos is someone that a lot of people would like to work for, particularly if it meant that they could learn from his successes.
While that might be a dream for people, it also seems highly unlikely you’d even pass the first round of questions during an interview. However, that’s not actually true and apparently, it’s pretty straightforward.
To prove this, Bezos once interviewed a potential Amazon employee by asking her just two questions.
Then he hired her on the spot.
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Ann Hiatt applied and was then interviewed for a role at Amazon in 2002.
I don’t know about you, but I’d be shaking in my boots if I had to be interviewed by the man himself. So you can only imagine how terrified she felt when she ended up facing 61-year-old Bezos (happy birthday!) as part of the recruitment process.
But at least she wasn’t asked these three crazy questions. So, it could have been worse.
While she had to pass a number of smaller interviews to get to this stage, once it was Bezos' turn to suss her out, things went quickly, as she revealed on the CNBC show CNBC Make It.
Hiatt, who was interviewing to be a Junior Assistant, made the revelation after leaving Amazon.
She said Bezos began by asking her a simple brain teaser that began with him saying: "I'll do the math."
"I want you to estimate the number of panes of glass in the city of Seattle," he said.
This forced Hiatt to seriously think on her feet to come up with something that resembled an answer.
I'm not going to lie, if I'd been in her shoes, I'd have probably panicked and run out of the room.
But not Hiatt, who told Bezos that the best way to establish a number would involve taking the city's population, and then creating a figure depending on whether they had a home, transportation, an office, and a school.
"So I suggested that we base the estimate on averages of those," she said.
She then worked with Bezos and the pair 'got down into every possible scenario, group, anomaly and ways to account for these exceptions'.
The hopeful assistant said it was thrilling to watch one of the world's richest men come up with the figure itself.
"That looks about right," he said afterwards.
The second question that he went on to ask her was a lot simpler, and it was one we've likely all been asked at some point.
"What are your career goals?" he questioned.
Hiatt explained that she wanted to work at Amazon because, in her opinion, the company was comprised of ambitious, passionate people who she wanted to learn from and emulate.
This was enough to seal the deal, and she said Bezos hired her on the spot.
Looking back on the interview process, she concluded: "He was measuring my potential by asking questions that would explore whether I had the grit, courage and motivation to run at his pace and be brave enough to consistently jump with him and level up."
Topics: Amazon, Jeff Bezos, Jobs
Britt Jones