Having a gap year is not a defect: Amazon VP

Have you ever taken a sabbatical or time off work to attend to personal matters? If yes, I'm sure you must have mulled over how you're going to incorporate that part of your life in your CV. And, more importantly, how recruiters are going to respond to it.

Scores of people globally had to take time off their professional lives in the last two years as a result of the pandemic. While for some the exercise was voluntary in order to attend to their families, for yet others, job cuts and layoffs led to gaps on their resumes. Is having a gap year on the CV an obstacle for job seekers?

Akhil Saxena , VP, Customer Opersations Fulfilment, Amazon, says having a gap year on a CV is not a defect. "The key thing for us is to ensure that in the gap year or whatever time you’ve had to take for personal matters, you’ve used the time well and have worked upon your skills," he told LinkedIn in an interview.

Click on the image below to see the full interview and read the excerpts below:

Q] There's a sea change for employees in the way we work – from interview patterns to changes employers are looking for in a resume. What are the three key points that you look for in a CV?

A] The first thing that we look at when we're looking at a CV is, how does this person relate to the culture of the organisation and leadership principles? I would encourage people to talk about not what you have done, but what is the impact that you have created. A lot of people just use job descriptions of their previous roles. Rather than that, I would encourage people to write about the impact that they've created in the roles in the past. I would encourage all of the people who are applying to Amazon to go through the leadership principles.

Q] How is the hiring process different for an online interview versus an in-person interview?

A] Be very confident. We would like to hear what is it that candidates seek from the organisation. What is it that they would like to contribute to the organisation.

The mechanisms of the interview process have changed. But the core concept has not. Be familiar with the rounds, be familiar with the leadership principles, prepare a lot of examples of how you might have lived the leadership principles, either in your college life or in your more recent career, because that's what interviewers look forward to.

We have a very strong team of recruiters who can help the candidate in identifying what needs to be done to prepare for an interview. Usually as part of an interview invite, we send people our leadership principles and more do's and don'ts so that it helps them to come in comfortably and be confident about the process.

Q] What would you say are some of the key asks Gen Z employees have when it comes to work today?

A] Gen Z as a cohort are much more confident. I remember my time when I was at 22 years old and when I went for my job, I was shaking in my pants.

Today, freshers are much more clearer about what they want in life, and that's not just about money or compensation. They seek flexibility in the way they could operate, in terms of where they can work from and the kind of work that they could do. They look at work-life harmony. In my time, maybe it wasn't paid attention to as much, even though I wanted to play badminton with my boss every evening so that we could always get together as a team. We are seeing a lot of people coming in saying, this is what I want to do. How can this organisation help me? That helps us identify the match between the candidate and the role.

Q] How has your hiring approach changed in terms of looking at people who have taken a gap year? ?

A] Having a gap year is not a defect. We’ve all understood the impact and implications of the pandemic. The key thing for us is to ensure that in the gap year or whatever time you’ve had to take for personal matters, you’ve used the time well and have worked upon your skills. If you have had the time to build upon skills, please bring them to your resume. Please talk about it. When you see the roles which are available on our Amazon job site, see to it that your resume is speaks to the role and it’s not just a standard, templatised resume.

I would not worry too much about gap years. If you have had to take a gap year to take care of something, talk about it, talk about what you've learned, talk about how you have grown as a person. And I think that is something that we would love to hear when we are doing our interviews.

Q] What are the three key ways in which companies can turn talent acquisition into talent retention?

A] A lot of the youngsters who come in, have grown with technology. And I think they don't want to come to a boring workplace. They don't want to come to a workplace which has a lot of paper work and a lot of reports and stuff like that.

They want to come in to say, I have a sense of purpose and therefore I would like to work in a very transparent, inclusive work environment, so that they could be their true selves. And I think all organisations in today's world, especially in today's world, need a lot of empathy.

I think organisations are much more understanding (today) than they were in the past. We also need to ensure that the people who are coming into the organisation have a very strong program/ project to work upon. People just don't want to come in and do routine mundane jobs. And because they want to be productive, they want to have fun. They want to be challenged. They want to take risks. As I said, today's people are not scared of failure. So take risks, be bold, be audacious, do things that have not been done before. It's okay to fail.

Q] Have you diversified your hiring approach with respect to geography?

A] What we do is, when we set up operations, especially field operations, we would like to look at people who are living in the vicinity, allow them to have access to job opportunities and skill development with us.

But we haven't really differentiated to say, okay, now that there's a pandemic, or now that we're expanding, we'll go to a tier two or tier four city. I don't think that's the intention. We are looking at communities of talent, which are available in the country.

For example, let's take military veterans. How do you source them? So we had a memorandum of understanding with the DGR, which is the directorate general resettlement. And we've worked with them to say, look, we need talent. And therefore they could come from the army or from the Navy or from the air force.

So I think our approach is not about region or locality. Our approach is to say, there are people who have talent and skills. How do we marry them with the work and the kind of roles that we have both in operations and beyond that in the tech space as well.

Q] How do you view frequent job changes on a CV?

A] This would be my personal take. I won't speak on behalf of Amazon. I have only worked for three companies in 33 years. I am of the view personally, that any role is up to us to make or break. It's up to us to grow in the role as a person. I don't think it's right or wrong. But I think I would impress upon the fact that it's going to be super critical for people to learn something new so that they can enhance themselves and their skills and competencies.

I think the worry is that when you come into a role, you take some time to absorb the culture of the company. And by the time, if you're already ready to move on to something else, have you really done yourself justice and have you really given the investment of time that is required to build yourself as a leader in that organisation?

Q] What would you say are the most critical skills needed today? Is a college degree important when it comes to applying for a particular job?

Q] We don't hire for a degree at Amazon. I have people on my team who have basically been captains of LNG ships. I've got people who have been lawyers and are working in operations. I've got people who have been submarine engineers. I've had people who have been teachers and are working with Amazon. So I don't think we worry about what's your past unless and until it's a very specialised, niche role to require a certain set of skills.

What we look at is here is a candidate. Can they be part of our culture? Can they scale up, can they contribute to making our customer experience more successful. People who are passionate about the cause, find a role.

Be your authentic self, be willing to roll up your sleeves. Be willing to take a lot of challenges. Don't worry too much about failure.

Have you ever taken time off work? How did that affect your career growth? Share your views with us in the comments.