Courtesy of Lisa Heins, Executive & Management Recruiter in the Amazon, Retail Media and Omnichannel space. Owner of Talent Concierge
To my clients in the Pureplay, Retail Media and Omnichannel space. Hold onto your hats and synch up with your finance leader! It’s going to take some major changes for some of you to win the battle for talent in this space.
I had been planning on posting about the extreme compensation inflation I am seeing from candidates with experience at Amazon or working on the Amazon Business for Brands and Agencies. This news out of Amazon is going to make things even more challenging.
Some advice from an experienced recruiter who has recruited exclusively in this space for over a decade:
- Get your compensation/finance team onboard before you launch a search. Start educating them on the market and that the existing ranges, likely won’t cut it. Help them understand the financial impact of these roles sitting open for many months. Getting them involved once you have a candidate in mind is too late because…
- Time kills all deals right now. Make sure your interview and offer process are buttoned up and as expedited as possible. Once these candidates decide to be active in their search, they have 50+ recruiter emails to return and numerous interviews going on. You do NOT have time to stall or get extra approvals. Your process should be keeping the candidate experience top of mind. These candidates are extremely selective.
- Remote working options have to be on the table unless you are willing to offer crazy money above the already high rates being expected. I speak to 15-20 candidates in this space a week and less than 5% are open to location specific roles. They know they are in high demand and are only open to roles that don’t require them to move or go into an office regularly.
- Projects or assessments as a part of the interview process should be seriously re-evaluated. I see roughly 50% of the candidates go dark once they are asked to commit this sort of time. Keep in mind, most of these candidates are managing a current job and actively interviewing. They will put you on hold to see the other interviews through first. There also are some very passionate feelings about doing ‘free consulting or work’.
I hope this helps some of you. I have a unique view into this talent and really don’t think most of the companies hiring this talent are ready for what they are about to face, hiring for these critical roles.
If you are in need of an external recruiter to help fill these key roles, please reach out and connect here.
If you are one of the lucky candidates with experience working on Amazon or other eCommerce retail players and are interested in starting a passive or active job search. I’d love to speak with you, please connect with me here as a starting point.
What do you think about the compensation trends in this space? What are you seeing?
