Category: amazon job fair

Hundreds flock to Amazon jobs fair in Kent

Susmita Diyali from Tukwila answers questions in a tent, waiting with others to go inside Amazon’s fulfillment center in Kent to apply for a job Wednesday. (Ellen M. Banner/The Seattle Times)

By Ángel González
Seattle Times business reporter
Amazon.com is looking to hire some 50,000 good women and men to pick, stow and pack items in its U.S. warehouses.

About 1,200 of those mostly permanent jobs are in Washington state. So on Wednesday — a day that the e-commerce giant declared “Amazon Jobs Day” — job applicants lined up by the hundreds at the company’s gargantuan, robot-filled Kent warehouse with the hopes of landing a position in one of the Amazon facilities in the Puget Sound area.

KENT: Amazon Jobs Day Wed August 2, 2017

Jonathan Vanian
Jul 26, 2017

Amazon is going on a hiring spree.

The online retail giant said Wednesday that it plans to hire 50,000 workers as part of a jobs fair it calls Amazon Jobs Day.

On August 2, Amazon (AMZN, -1.02%) said it would invite interested job candidates to ten of its various fulfillment centers across the U.S. From 8 a.m. to noon on that day, Amazon staff will show prospective employees tours of their warehousing facilities, perform interviews, and “make thousands of on-the-spot job offers to qualified candidates,” according to the announcement.

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Amazon vice president of worldwide operations and human resources John Olsen said in a statement that the jobs would offer “highly-competitive wages” and benefits.

“These are great opportunities with runway for advancement,” Olsen said. “In fact, of our entry level managers across Amazon’s U.S. fulfillment centers, nearly 15% started in hourly roles and were promoted into their current positions.”

Prospective job candidates can expect these fulfillment center roles to involve a lot of picking, packing, and shipping of the various goods Amazon distributes each day throughout the U.S.

Of the 50,000 open position, Amazon said over 10,000 will be part-time jobs.
Here’s a list of the cities Amazon will host its jobs fair: Baltimore, Md.; Chattanooga, Tenn.; Etna, Ohio.; Fall River, Mass.; Hebron, Ky.; Kenosha, Wis.; Kent, Wash.; Robbinsville, N.J.; Romeoville, Ill.; Whitestown, Ind.; Buffalo, N.Y. (part-time work only); Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Okla. (part-time work only).
Amazon’s big jobs push seems to follow up on an earlier announcement Amazon made in January when it said it plans to hire 100,000 full-time employees by the middle of 2018. Besides warehouse workers, Amazon also wants to hire software engineers, data scientists, and customer service workers.If Amazon were to hire 100,000 workers by 2018, it would employ over 280,000 U.S. employees.

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