Nick spent over 5 years at Amazon where he co-founded Amazon Game Studios and led teams to grow Amazon’s partnerships with game developers. During this time, Nick also became an Amazon Bar Raiser, interviewing over 350 Amazon candidates and mentoring multiple bar raisers in training before leaving Amazon to educate job candidates and enterprise clients on Amazon’s hiring process through his company, Amazon Bound.

Listen to Nick share his tips on attracting strong applicants and developing strong performers from his time building Amazon Game Studios. You’ll also hear Nick explain what a Bar Raiser is and walk through this key role at Amazon, sharing best practices from his deep experience.

Whether you are looking for tips to improve your own ability to make strong hiring decisions or curious about what your organization should consider when developing its own Bar Raiser program, you will find battle-tested steps and advice from Nick’s experience in this important space.

Mentioned in the podcast: 

The Day One Syndicate: https://angel.co/day-one/syndicate

Amazon Bound: https://amazonbound.today/

Nick on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickdimitrov/

More from the episode:

7:12 – The origin of the Amazon’s relentless focus on hiring top performers

8:45 – How to attract top performers to your business

11:00 – Why you should develop fungible, general athletes and move them around the organization

16:41 – The Bar Raiser role at Amazon

19:26 – How to help a team make the right hiring decision by focusing on the atomic data points

21:20 – When Amazon will decide to “recycle” a strong candidate

23:00 – How Amazon centers hiring decision on data

25:23 – What pre-requisites an organization should consider to successfully implement a Bar Raiser program

28:53 – The role of the Bar Raiser in training and developing interviewers

32:23 – What should managers be thinking about to improve their hiring