Topics: News, Business, Amazon, Jeff Bezos, Life, Technology
The Amazon application process is no joke, but if you're successful, you're set for life.
Well, that's what an Amazon employee recalled before finally meeting Jeff Bezos.
Before Ann Hiatt carved herself a successful career, she was just like any one of us - hoping for her big break.
After graduating from the University of Washington in 2002, Hiatt realized that her classmates weren't having luck in the job department and decided to go into a profession she didn't expect she'd try - tech.
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While Hiatt had no experience as an assistant, she decided she didn't have anything to lose and took the plunge to apply for a role at Amazon as Bezos' junior assistant.
Even though she was inexperienced, Hiatt got a call-back from the company and was even given the opportunity to be interviewed.
However, this process was 'dizzying' and she suffered through 'back-to-back interviews with the senior assistants.
But her hard work paid off in the end and Hiatt went on to make it to the final interview stage.
But the recruiter didn't mention that it would be with Bezos himself.
Eek, talk about scary.
Of course, if you're being interviewed by the boss, you'd expect to be grilled, but Bezos simply asked Hiatt two questions.
"Bezos started the interview by promising that he was only going to ask two questions and that the first one would be a 'fun' brainteaser,'" she penned in a CNBC article.
For the first question, Hiatt had to estimate the number of panes of glass in the city of Seattle.
Urm, what?
Hiatt admitted she was 'terrified' by the question at first, but quickly put her thinking cap on did some calculations.
Explaining how she came to her answer, she wrote: "I outlined how I would start with the number of people in Seattle, which I thankfully correctly guessed as around 1 million, just to make the math easier.
"Then I said that they would each have a home, a mode of transportation, and an office or school - all of which would have windows. So I suggested that we base the estimate on averages of those."
After 10 minutes of maths, Hiatt presented her estimate to Bezos.
"That looks about right," he told her at the time, evidently pleased with her answer.
Now, for the second question, the business mogul asked Hiatt about her career goals.
"I told him that Amazon had proven to be a company full of ambitious and passionate people," Hiatt recalled.
"I wanted to be like them and learn what they knew. Their strengths were in the areas I personally wanted to develop, so the value of the experience was obvious, even though it felt like a diversion from my goal of being a professor.
"I explained that I had no idea how to be an assistant, but that I knew the importance of being consistently outside of my comfort zone. I wanted to jump into an astronomical learning and growth curve."
Following her successful answers, Hiatt was hired 'on the spot' and the rest was history.
Starting off as a junior assistant, she continued to work closely with Bezos during her time at Amazon and eventually became one of his Executive Business Partners.
Impressive!
