As the weather starts to change, many of us are already thinking ahead to the holiday season. Perhaps no organization has so many people who are doing so much thinking ahead to the holiday season as Amazon. Not coincidentally, no other organization has ever hired as many people so quickly to cope with customer demand as Amazon, the subject of today's podcast.

Yet can Amazon continue to hire the people that it needs? The uncomfortable truth is that it cannot -- and internally admits so -- without fundamentally changing its approach to how it recruits and retains its largely part-time, hourly workforce. Internal documents reveal that Amazon is already running out of potential employees in multiple key markets and will run out in most within several years. Instead of reacting to the problem when it is too late, leaders at Amazon have identified the threat and are working feverishly to solve the problem. What is apparent is that the problem cannot be solved easily nor will one change -- large or small -- solve the problem. Instead, Amazon is actively working along multiple paths to ensure that it can continue not just to survive, but also to thrive, in a world where its current high volume hiring practices will no longer be feasible.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices