Key Components Of Amazon's Onboarding Process -- Steal Jeff Bezos's People Strategy For Your Onboarding

Amazon's success largely stems from its employee onboarding approach. The company has developed principles that bring new employees up to speed quickly while instilling Amazon's culture and values.

Can You Teach Someone To Care More?

Jeff Bezos addressed this question in his 2017 shareholder letter, stating that Amazon continuously works on improving hiring and onboarding so "we can continue to bring in more talented people." The letter notes that new hires sometimes arrive with potential but fail to meet expectations.

Bezos argues the answer is yes — standards can be taught through two mechanisms:

Bar-Raising Hiring: Existing team members ask candidates how they'd solve problems without obvious solutions, testing their thinking approach. "Bar raisers" from different teams ask tough questions to assess rigor.

Leadership Principles: New hires are educated on and tested against Amazon's values during onboarding.

1. High Standards Are Teachable and Contagious

Bezos explained: "High standards are contagious. Bring a new person onto a high-standards team, and they'll quickly adapt." Conversely, low standards spread equally fast.

Application:

Use the onboarding period to establish good impressions and consistent habits. Create a training plan emphasizing high standards. Define desired behaviors in your checklist (for example, showing empathy in customer support through real-life scenarios). Present a unified front across all onboarding stakeholders.

2. High Standards Are Domain-Specific

Standards vary by expertise area. Someone excelling in one domain may lack standards elsewhere. Amazon uses onboarding to assess compatibility between the new hire's position and related standards.

Application:

Use surveys and quizzes to assess standards in different areas. Determine job-specific standards immediately. Work with hiring managers on relevant exercises — for instance, having accounting hires review work for attention to detail, then explaining the reasoning. Measure and collect data throughout orientation.

3. Recognize and Set High Standards

Some standards are obvious (like a perfect handstand), while others are ambiguous (what makes an excellent memo). Amazon's onboarding teaches employees to recognize different standards.

Application:

After identifying domain-specific standards, specify expectations and assess new hires accordingly. Use quizzes for roles like retail associates on customer service standards. If results show low standards, strengthen through practice and coaching before releasing employees to productivity.

4. Keep a Realistic Scope

Bezos illustrates that poor performance sometimes reflects unrealistic scope rather than low standards. A great memo might require a week; if someone produces one in two days falling short, the issue may be time/resource constraints, not standards.

Application:

Clarify both standards and acceptable scope for different tasks. Provide examples distinguishing "okay" performance from "excellent." This reduces stress and prevents misunderstandings.

Conclusion

These four principles — teaching standards through exposure, recognizing domain-specificity, setting clear expectations, and maintaining realistic scope — form the foundation of effective onboarding. Survey and assess new hires' standards, work with managers on relevant exercises, and practice until behaviors become repeatable.