Amazon's
'made-for-India' hiring strategy may soon go global. The e-commerce
giant is exploring the idea of rolling out Building Operations
Leadership (BOLD), its MBA hiring programme unique to India, to other
countries as well.
"BOLD was launched specifically for India in 2011. Now we have been talking about introducing it in other markets as well," Raj Raghavan, director, HR, Amazon India, told ET.
He declined to comment on the other markets under consideration.
Where BOLD differs from Pathways - Amazon's global flagship leadership development programme - is that it takes in students with around two to four years of pre-MBA work experience, whereas for Pathways, the average prior work experience required is 7.5 years in operations and people management roles. "We realised that India was a very different market from the US, where a majority of the students finish their undergraduate programme and work for several years before doing their MBA. In India, from an overall standpoint, there wasn't a big enough MBA student pool with enough experience and we didn't want to disadvantage ourselves. Hence, BOLD," explained Raghavan.
Both BOLD and Pathways hire for the operations function that is key to Amazon's success. "The backbone of Amazon is its operational excellence. Because they are so efficient, they can execute faster and keep costs down. Most of the headcount always comes from operations," says Ashish Jhalani, founder of eTailingindia, a research firm that tracks the e-commerce industry.
BOLD, a rotational programme, was launched with the intent to build a pipeline of strong operations managers for tech and non-tech teams in India. This is a structured MBA leadership programme that hones the participants' functional and leadership skills through on-the-job learning.
Pathways aims at developing a pipeline of experienced leaders who are capable of taking on general manager and senior leader positions in operations. Pathways participants are hired for their deep analytical skillset and are expected to develop leadership skills through on-the-job work, business critical assignments and 'crucible' experiences.
Through BOLD, Pathways, as well as direct recruiting of experienced students, Amazon has emerged as one of the most prominent recruiters across campuses. Earlier this year, it made a debut into ET's top recruiters at B-schools list with around 50 hires across top management institutes including IIMs Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Calcutta and SP Jain Institute of Management and Research. It is believed to have hired around 45 students from the executive programme at ISB as well, says a source.
"Our campus hiring will run into several hundreds this year," says Raghavan. That includes MBAs, tech talent (primarily in software development engineer roles) from IITs and NITs as well as interns.
While the company declined to reveal specific numbers, there was an average increase of about 45% to 50% in the B-school student intake in 2013-14 as compared to 2012-13. A similar increase is expected this year.
"BOLD was launched specifically for India in 2011. Now we have been talking about introducing it in other markets as well," Raj Raghavan, director, HR, Amazon India, told ET.
He declined to comment on the other markets under consideration.
Where BOLD differs from Pathways - Amazon's global flagship leadership development programme - is that it takes in students with around two to four years of pre-MBA work experience, whereas for Pathways, the average prior work experience required is 7.5 years in operations and people management roles. "We realised that India was a very different market from the US, where a majority of the students finish their undergraduate programme and work for several years before doing their MBA. In India, from an overall standpoint, there wasn't a big enough MBA student pool with enough experience and we didn't want to disadvantage ourselves. Hence, BOLD," explained Raghavan.
Both BOLD and Pathways hire for the operations function that is key to Amazon's success. "The backbone of Amazon is its operational excellence. Because they are so efficient, they can execute faster and keep costs down. Most of the headcount always comes from operations," says Ashish Jhalani, founder of eTailingindia, a research firm that tracks the e-commerce industry.
BOLD, a rotational programme, was launched with the intent to build a pipeline of strong operations managers for tech and non-tech teams in India. This is a structured MBA leadership programme that hones the participants' functional and leadership skills through on-the-job learning.
Pathways aims at developing a pipeline of experienced leaders who are capable of taking on general manager and senior leader positions in operations. Pathways participants are hired for their deep analytical skillset and are expected to develop leadership skills through on-the-job work, business critical assignments and 'crucible' experiences.
Through BOLD, Pathways, as well as direct recruiting of experienced students, Amazon has emerged as one of the most prominent recruiters across campuses. Earlier this year, it made a debut into ET's top recruiters at B-schools list with around 50 hires across top management institutes including IIMs Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Calcutta and SP Jain Institute of Management and Research. It is believed to have hired around 45 students from the executive programme at ISB as well, says a source.
"Our campus hiring will run into several hundreds this year," says Raghavan. That includes MBAs, tech talent (primarily in software development engineer roles) from IITs and NITs as well as interns.
While the company declined to reveal specific numbers, there was an average increase of about 45% to 50% in the B-school student intake in 2013-14 as compared to 2012-13. A similar increase is expected this year.
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