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
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)