Bar Raiser Hiring

Bar Raiser hiring is Amazon’s hiring mechanism that adds a trained, independent interviewer to each loop to protect culture fit, functional standards, and decision quality against the hiring manager’s urgency bias.

Key points

• Carr says the process began early in Amazon’s history because hypergrowth created a pattern of new people hiring newer people before they fully understood Amazon’s standards or culture ^[src-018].
• The Bar Raiser is not the hiring manager and does not report to the hiring manager; they run the debrief and act as a process expert ^[src-018].
• The hiring manager remains the decision maker, but the Bar Raiser technically has veto power and should normally guide the discussion rather than use it bluntly ^[src-018].
• After Amazon established its Leadership Principles, the Bar Raiser process used them as objective criteria and behavioural interviewing as the methodology ^[src-018].
• The mechanism balances urgency with standards: it helps managers avoid filling roles with people who do not meet Amazon’s cultural or functional bar ^[src-018].
• Carr recommends piloting Bar Raisers in one department first, selecting people who care deeply about hiring, interview well, and show high standards ^[src-018].

Related entities

• Amazon
• Bill Carr

Related concepts

• Hire and Develop the Best
• Behavioural Interviewing
• Amazon Leadership Principles
• Working Backwards (Book)

Source references

• ^[src-018] Lenny’s Podcast — “Unpacking Amazon’s unique ways of working | Bill Carr (author of Working Backwards)” (2023-11-02)