Insist on the Highest Standards

How Amazon Raised the Bar on Recruiting Talent | John Vlastelica

Dave Schappell · July 14, 2021 · Leave a Comment

Today, in the Invent Like An Owner Podcast, Dave speaks with John Vlastelica to talk about how Amazon scaled recruitment. They’ll discuss the origin and impact of the Bar Raiser program, where select employees helped pick top notch applicants, the birth of Making Great Hiring Decisions, Amazon’s behavioral interviewing training, how Matt Round’s MRT was designed for the interviewers not recruiters, and the challenges companies face scaling a high hiring bar. John Vlastelica …

How Amazon Built its Merchant Selling Platform | John Rossman

Dave Schappell · June 23, 2021 · Leave a Comment

Today, in the Invent Like An Owner Podcast, Dave speaks with John Rossman. They talk about how the Merchants@ program was built from scratch, why working directly with third party sellers prompted the principle of seller obsession, launching the Apparel and Sporting Goods categories, developing smaller teams within the retail organization, and essentially, how Amazon’s Leadership Principles led the way to writing his book, “The Amazon Way”. John Rossman is the former Director of Merchant …

The Story behind ASINs (Amazon Standard Identification Numbers)

Rebecca Allen · June 8, 2021 · 18 Comments

During Amazon’s earliest days (1994-1995), CTO Shel Kaphan and Software Engineer Paul (then) Barton-Davis had to write all the software needed to power Amazon.com on the day it offered its website to the world to sell books (official launch date was July 16, 1995). The book catalog was online, and it needed an index (well, it needed several indexes, but that’s another story); specifically, it needed a unique key for each item in the catalog. Because the databases they were using to create the …

How Amazon Used Imagination and Technology to Invent for Customers | Maryam Mohit

Dave Schappell · June 2, 2021 · 3 Comments

Today, in the Invent Like An Owner Podcast, Dave speaks with Maryam Mohit. They talk about the different iterations of the early Amazon website that massively improved customer experience. Key improvements included navigation, browse, adding search to the homepage, personalizing the website, adding electronic gift certificates, expanding to new categories and much more. It was all made possible by listening to customers and translating their confusion and input into innovative product …