Amazon virtual hiring event draws over 1 million applicants

Amazon’s Career Day 2021 hiring blitz for 40,000 job openings attracted job seekers from more than 170 countries around the world.

The e-tail giant held its annual 24-hour Career Day virtual hiring event on Sep. 15, 2021. According to Amazon, more than 1 million people globally applied for 40,000 corporate and technology roles across 220-plus locations in the U.S., as well as tens of thousands of hourly positions in its operations network.

In addition, more than 2,000 Amazon recruiters offered 30,000 individual career coaching sessions with participants. The recruiters provided job seekers with professional advice to start, transition, or grow their careers, whether they wanted to work at Amazon or elsewhere.

More than 220,000 job-seekers from all 50 U.S. states visited the Career Day event site. Since announcing Career Day 2021 on Sep. 1, 2021, Amazon says it has received more than 500,000 job applications for corporate, tech, and hourly roles in the U.S. Some of the most popular positions among job seekers for tech roles were software development, IT, support engineers, and operations management.

Amazon has hired more than 450,000 people in the U.S. since the beginning of the pandemic, and says it is now the largest job creator in the U.S. In 2020, in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, Amazon says it hired over 400,000 employees in the U.S.—of which, more than 60% are now paid more than they were at their previous job.

[Read more: Amazon in hiring blitz; giving bonus to hires who show proof of vaccination]

Of the new employees hired across Amazon’s operations network, nearly 30,000 joined Amazon from the manufacturing sector, another 19,000 from traditional retail, and 16,500 from education and healthcare, among others. The company received more than 30 million job applications for roles at Amazon in 2020, almost double the number from 2019.

Amazon was also recently named by LinkedIn as the number one company where Americans want to work and develop their careers. During Career Day 2020, Amazon saw the highest one-week number of job applications in the history of the company. The 2021 Career Day event is open to all, regardless of their level of experience, professional field, or background.

According to a new Morning Consult job-seeker insight survey commissioned by Amazon, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, 40% of professionals in the U.S. are currently reconsidering their career paths. Almost half of the respondents (43%) identified better pay and benefits as the top reason they are looking for new work.

The Morning Consult survey also found that post-pandemic, one in five job seekers (21%) find the current talent pool too competitive, and one-third of job seekers (34%) believe their current set of skills will become outdated in the next five to 15 years. Over half (51%) of workers are now interested in learning new skills that could help them improve their career trajectory.

“We know a lot of people are looking for work right now, and many more are hoping to change their careers,” said Beth Galetti, Amazon senior VP of people experience and technology. “We are paying close attention to this and we feel uniquely positioned to help—not only because of the tens of thousands of jobs that we have open, but also for the opportunity we offer people to build a meaningful career. We think Amazon is a great place to work for those who crave the freedom to invent, the chance to make a big impact, and an inclusive workplace to do so. We are glad so many people joined Career Day to learn more about the jobs we have to offer.”