So again, welcome everybody. Today, we are speaking about Amazon's internship program, which is a completely new thing and it has been recently launched in EM I uh which is very exciting. Um So what is Amazon's internship program?Actually, Amazon's internship program is a 16 weeks program for those professionals who at some point had to put their careers on hold and who had to stop working for a period of time at Amazon. We say life happens and we might want to pause our careers for absolutely any reasons. So we decided to come up with a specific plan. Amazon's return to program is a, is a 16 weeks program. It's 100% remote, it helps us to uh to offer you a structured work environment that has a specific plan that includes uh a lot of onboarding, of course, and a lot of training as well as a real time work assignment. Um Throughout the program, our returners uh receive quite some mentorship and Erica will talk about that later because she is one of our first returners. And I would absolutely like to discuss it in more detail with Erica today. Apart from that, you I mean, apart from mentorship, of course, you also have an onboarding body, a person who helps you to get on board and to understand how Amazon works.

Um And of course, uh the, the entire team would, would do their best to help you revamp your skills and to um to, to polish your knowledge. So who is eligible for Amazon's internship program? Well, actually all requirements uh are in the place to be, but sometimes we are ready to show a lot of flexibility. So normally we say that in order to be eligible for this program, you are supposed to have a one plus year career gap. However, if let's say you have only 10 months of, of a career gap or uh maybe way more than one year, that's still perfectly fine and we will still love to hear from you. Um Who are our typical returners? Our typical returners are parents, caregivers, those people who decided to take an educational leave, uh immigrants and so on and so forth. As I mentioned before, we might want to pause our careers for absolutely any reasons. Uh why did Amazon decide to provide such a program?

So, um basically, our customer feedback indicated an opportunity to improve the way we recruit and support Amazon is, is trying to become the best world employer. And of course, uh in this case, we cannot punish people for, for their career breaks and we need to be fair. We need to provide opportunities to those who, who need them. Um I actually have quite a lengthy presentation but I don't think that we should focus on it. I would like to ask Erica to share her experience with us because I think that it's way more valuable than any presentation in the world. Erica. Please

go ahead. No worries. And so my name is Erica. Um I've been a software software developer for many years before. Actually a family situation uh require me to be spending more time with my kids. So I have stopped working for three years. I mean, after three years now, my daughter is old enough and my husband due to pandemic is now able to work at home, which kind of free me to actually kickstart my career. But um probably you would know anytime you wanted to go back to the job market, if you have a lengthy gap, um that gap is going to raise a few eyebrows. People were probably very curious about what were you doing? Why you stopped? Are you going to do it again to us? So you will, you will be faced with various questions and you probably won't even go through the first stage of hr and that's why I think Amazon's return actually helped here because there are specific, particularly for people who had this lengthy grape regardless if it's for your health issue, family or you just want break or education.

So they don't really worry about why you're taking a break. They just want to make sure you are keen and you're ready to get back to your career path, which basically applied to me. And um the return itself. Another thing is, is super efficient at Amazon for what I feel is I send my CV um, on day one. Then within a week I heard back from, uh Valeria about, you know, they have a few department interested, you know, then it's not a one way straight. We had a conversation about what, what's your requirements? What do you feel most comfortable with? And here are you hiring managers who have vacancies from then on, things went really smoothly. I think within two or three weeks it was sorted out. Now, I saw the contract and everything just started. But um I think the things doesn't stop there. Once you get on board, the, the manager, the hiring manager is fully ready because they know you've taken a career break, you might need a specific help or you might need some training and they have on boarding program, which is very full blown. So you can follow the steps. Of course, you are experienced person. So certain areas you already know, you don't have to do the person, 1 to 1 for a new beginner.

You basically can jumpstart on the areas you expert, but ask for help and there is an onboarding B as well which you can talk to because that's literally someone started Amazon not too long ago, so probably went through a lot of the troubles or problems you've come across so you can always have someone there to help you.

So all in all my experience has been very positive for the internship and to be honest now, I don't even feel like I'm in internship. It feels like just a proper job now.

Amazing. Thank you so much for sharing, Erica. I have a question. What was your main challenge when you actually joined this program? Did you have any hesitations or fears? Could you share that? Because I'm very sure that a lot of um our potential returners might have the same feelings and the same, you know, situations.

Absolutely. So a few things always in my mind, the first is, would I be able to juggle the family with the career? And in that case, the return program is fully remote which allows me to actually manage my schedule better. I could because I'm a software developer, I can find the time best suit me to do my coding while I can just tell my manager, I need to go to the school to pick up et cetera. And that works out perfectly well because they are so understandable. You got a family outside work. Secondly, you're probably thinking about um the technical side on your, you know, you really haven't been that field hands on for a number of years. And am I still up to date with the market. But to be honest, from my point of view, you are because the knowledge don't go past, they, they don't just slip away from your mind. And to be honest with you, my experience has been a C# developer while at Amazon, I'm doing Java programming. That's a complete switch. But you know, it's incredible switch. But I think it's your knowledge, especially at the ability to understand the work environment is more valuable than your specific skills that you have to keep up to date every day. So I wouldn't worry about that. How, how hard

was it for you to actually switch to Java? I know that sometimes it might sound like a challenge to switch so quickly to another language after a career break. What's your experience?

Um I mean, for me, Java is easy because they are kind of all object oriented in many ways. It's very similar to C# however, what really helps me is uh I have a very helping team and they were always have a chat with me or bring up to date with me all the packages. Like it's specific to Java because that's the hardest part when you're switching programming language, what are the exact existing libraries? What's the best way to do it? But we always had a like lunchtime chat or around the table which bring you up to speed on these little things.

So that builds up your confidence. The more you do it, the more confident you are and then you're just happily writing things without realizing what language you're actually using. I'm pretty sure it applies to other business area as well. Once you get used to it, it just comes natural to you.

And that makes a lot of sense, right? Um I receive these questions quite often. Valeria, what do I do if um I'm an expert in Microsoft's Tech, for example, but I don't see any relevant positions on your website. Normally I say that it's absolutely not a problem, right? Because um Amazon is using so many different technologies and we are really investing in developing our talents that it doesn't really matter, you can always learn new things. And as long if it well as long as this is the case and we are ready to learn, there are basically no limitations and we would be more than happy to, to consider. Apart from software development positions at Amazon, we are also looking for technical program management managers and non technical as well. By the way, we have our program, not only for tech professionals but for non tech experts as well. Uh So, but speaking about tech, we are speaking about as uh software developers, we are speaking about technical program managers, we are speaking about product managers in tech, we are speaking about data analysts and data scientists. We also have opportunities for data engineers.

So basically we are developing our program, we are expanding this program. And even if there is no open position corresponding to your profile, give it a try because you might encourage us to add more roles and more opportunities, right. So it should not be a blocker by the end of uh our today uh conversation. I will also add a link to our career website because I know that it's quite difficult to find and quite difficult to understand where all those internships are uh in Amazon environment. But yeah, we, we, we recently created something so we could, you know, advertise our jobs separately. Erica. Um Speaking about your uh experience with Amazon, I know that you have mentioned it already uh a little bit, but I would like to, to, to speak more about it. A lot of returners asked me um how do we go about flexible schedules? Um It's a full time job. So how strict is Amazon in terms of, you know, schedules and meeting your needs, meeting your requirements? What is your experience there?

OK. Uh Flexibility. I, I think we need to be realistic. It is a full time job you're committing to. So you have to be ready to put 100% of both your time and your effort into it, especially, you know, um as a technical job, if you are half minded, you just won't be able to accomplish what you set out to do. So it's both for the job and for your own self. But as far as flexibility is concerned, Amazon offers a great flexibility to me and my hiring manager at the very first meeting already said, we recognize you've got a family and he has got family himself. So he totally understand and sometimes you have to run for school run or you might have events, et cetera. He said, as long as we let the team know and you are going to be working between this time to this time and this time, this time you block it out, you are doing certain things. They are very flexible because for us software developer, what's more important is about deliverables and the quality of the deliver, deliverable rather than how much time you are sitting there, you have to be there from 9 to 5.

That's definitely not the case and nobody is actually required to do that. They have, um, we normally have a daily stand up meeting at the very beginning. We talk about what we have done yesterday and what's my plan today and that's pretty much it if you are on a good day and you are full freedom to do what you need to accomplish what you actually wanted. If you tell your manager, I need a bit of training on this. They can adjust the deliverable time to suit your needs or your ability. So it's very flexible, but I think you do need to commit to it.

Absolutely. Absolutely great. Um just give, uh, give me a second. I will check our chat to see if we have questions and it looks like we have some comments. So I will take a second to, to read them and maybe to answer them be before our time is up. Oh, so nice program. Uh Is it open to any vacancy or are you recruiting for selected ones only uh via this program? Yeah. So basically, uh it's a very new program. We still keep adding opportunities initially when I joined uh this, this program in December 2021. Uh we had only one job family, right? It was um software developers of a certain level right now, we are open for different levels from junior to senior. And uh as I mentioned right now, we have in tech, at least we have seven job families and I would say that we have uh even more in, in non tech. So overall, we have uh around 20 job families, I would say and the program keeps growing. So if you did not find a relevant opportunity, no worries, go ahead. Uh and we will do our best to match you with the right with the right job. Uh Will it be ok? Ok.

For folks who are on the job market for a long period of time eligible for this program or is there a better program for early careerists that are making career shifts? Absolutely. Please go ahead

because uh yes, good, very good question. And uh I had about 10 years experience in software development, which actually has a range of, I've been working for Bloomberg, which is a data provider. Been working for smaller hedge funds. I've been working for some investment managers and I've been working for a various company like consultancy companies. So definitely it's open for people who have a long period of career path because they allow people like that. You've got vast amount of knowledge and your skills, right?

They don't have to retrain you and you will be fast tracked to a more senior position in that case. And what if you earlier careers, I mean, you know, yeah, of course, if you had one or two years work and then you decided I need to do my full time master or I need to take a gap or whatever. And I think that's perfect valid reason as well. So because Amazon is such a large corporation, they have from junior to senior level, they have a variety of opportunities. So yeah, seniority is not obstacle here at all.

Exactly. So that is why we normally put it this way. As long as you have two plus years of non internship, relevant experience, we should be good to go because as Erica mentioned, we are open to very different levels and um the seniority topic should not be an issue in our, in our case. Uh The next question is, do you have to have a degree to be qualified for the rules. So uh this is what we normally use for our job descriptions, we say a degree or an equivalent because we do realize that there are right now so many different uh opportunities for learning for educating yourself that we would not like to limit our program by a specific degree.

Of course, in some roles, you will see that we have uh some prefer um well preferred uh requirements or skills. And among those, you will see that some teams might want uh somebody with a master's degree, for example, but normally it's a nice to have, it's not a must have, right? So if you don't have that, if you don't have a phd in a certain area, uh still go ahead, still apply because for us, the, the formal education is not, is not the biggest requirement I would say. And we would still be able to, to consider. OK. OK. OK. I see some other questions. Uh What was the most valuable aspect of the uh returning program which helped you get up to speed? Erica? I think it's yours.

Yeah. Uh There are a couple of that. First of all, we, they have a very uh comprehensive embarking plan which basically planned out these four weeks with a deliverable at the very end. So imagine you have four months project starting very gently, you will be doing very simple changes, then gradually builds up eventually is a complete project at the end of four months for you to prove your skills and your knowledge. So that part, I, I think it's very, very valuable because you actually see you are achieving something at a limited time. Another thing they have uh on boarding body, which is someone you can always refer to when you need some, you know, questions or help or whatever you need. Really, that guy is there. It's on the same level as you. So it's not your manager. It doesn't not affect your evaluation or anything, someone you can talk to. Lastly, it's fully remote. So its offer the flexibility of you actually juggling a couple of things and I hope that answers your question probably.

If not, we will see a follow up question. I'm very sure because we still have some time. Um The next question um Guys, I'm reading this in a chronological order. So um s so everything should be fine. So uh first thanks a lot for OK. Th thank you, Erica for sharing your experience. Uh Do you know how many people Amazon hire in internship program? Well, actually, as the program is growing, the number of open rules uh is also growing. Uh Right now in tech environment, I have more than 40 open roles for different job families. But uh we are not limited by this number because every day we receive more requirements, more demand. And that is why what I'm saying today might be irrelevant, uh, in a couple of days because I might get more roles to fill and we don't, don't have any specific start date. So it's not like a program, uh, in which everybody has to start, let's say on the first of July. No, we hire as we go. So basically, we don't have any limits in terms of the start dates. We don't have a lot of limits in terms of how many returners we want to hire. But our bright and very ambitious, I would say goal is to hire uh 1000 plus returners within the next year.

Uh And this is our common goal goal with uh with the US team because we have a internship team for, for the, for North America and for Europe and altogether, we would like to reach that number because it will definitely help Amazon to, to do even a better job and to be even more customer obsessed, right?

Because each of us uh might be uh a customer of Amazon, right? And this as we are trying to be the best employer in the world, uh we we definitely need to, to work hard on it. Um The next question is, is the return format standardized or tailored to each role specifically. So we have some standards, of course, um Each returner works on a separate or on a different project depending on um which team you collaborate with, right? You might have different projects.

However, the, the plan itself is standardized, the evaluation process is standardized, the interview process is standardized. So uh apart from the project um or you know, or teams, uh we, we, we, we have standardized everything so only the project might um might not be the same.

Mhm What kind of projects could they be? So, again, it depends on the uh on the team, Erica, would you like to, to mention the project you are working

on? Yeah, because I'm a programmer. So it might be very technical, but I try to explain it. So the the one I um I'm working on uh intelligence, business Intelligence plan tool, which is a tool Amazon internally use for their midterm planning. So this project which I'm working on involves front and middle and then backend changes to the code. And we started with the very basic and simple back and change what needs to be added to achieve, adding a new functionality to it. Then we move on to the middle part of all the services, et cetera, which will update relevant code, the business logic and then link back to the backend change you've done. Then you will start with the front end change which obviously use React and top script, which is quite new to me. But then they give me a couple of resources for quick brush up of all these skills. Then we can plug that front and to the middle side. So this is the whole project which I got for four months. Obviously, on top of that, you have a lot of unit testing, integra testing and the user testing as well. So that's a complete project I landed as a software developer. Obviously, if you are project manager or something different, I assume you have something completely different, but it will be a small size doable project within that time frame, I think. Absolutely.

And apart from Erica's team, uh we are also collaborating with artificial intelligence robotics teams with Amazon Prime. Uh And as you know, Amazon Entertainment is quite, quite a huge topic. Apart from Prime, there are a lot of other teams. So um you, you, you might want to work on super different project uh projects that belong to different teams and even different businesses, let's say because Amazon, it's everything, it's aws, it's Amazon Entertainment, uh Opsec and so on and so forth. OK? When people graduate the program, where do they go? Well, actually, most of our returners uh stay with us so they don't go anywhere unless they want to. Um But by the end of the 16 weeks program, there, there would be uh a presentation, a formal milestone, let's say. And after that milestone, you and your hiring manager would need to decide if you would like to continue working together. But of course, uh our goal is to provide permanent opportunities to as many returners as we can. OK?

I like the quotation for the next question. Are they real projects? Yes, they are. The real question has real business values and real person delivering it real user. Actually, the project I was working on is a global project. So all the global station managers in Amazon will be using the functionalities we deliver in this project. So yes, they are real.

Uh I see another question. Um Is this internship program available remotely around the world or just in the US? Amazing news. Uh I'm an emir recruiter. So the program is also available in uh Romania, the UK Germany and Luxembourg and we might want to expand. So as we are at the very beginning of our journey, we don't have all the countries in the world, but we are working on it and we are expanding. So right now in Europe, we are actively collaborating uh with four with four countries. OK. Amazing. Uh Let me have a look. Um We might have more questions but I'm also not sure how much time we have. Um uh If, if our dear moderators could drop a message to, let me know if we still have some time to, to, to, to answer more questions or we should, we should finalize. OK. Erica, can you see the chat?

I can see the chart. Um

Do we have any anything there? Top

technical architect

role? OK. OK. I think that we are still alive. Uh which, which is great because we started also slightly later. One second. OK. I si still see another question but guys, I would like you to, to text us if, if you can still hear and see us because I'm very unsure. Yes. OK.

And then you get to know. And so

yes, for some reason I was thrown away from the chat and I was like, mm I was still talking or not. OK. So there is another question. If I have done the cloud practitioner exams, can I apply for uh a solutions architect role? Well, um look, uh I think you can uh apply for any uh role that we have uh on our website because I don't think that we have this specific role right now. Solutions Architect. But uh when we read your CV, we will be able to uh proceed with the right position for you or we will be able to, to discuss alternatives. So I would definitely apply and then we would figure it out. Amazing. Do we have any other questions? It looks like we're still alive and we are still happy to, to take more questions uh Before we go? OK, thank you very much. I see a lot of um kind words uh in the chat. Let me just check our Q and A because it's still available. OK? We don't have any messages there. OK. Amazing guys. I'm sharing once again the link to our internship job board. So after this session, you would be able to go there directly and apply or feel free to share on linkedin as well because a lot of people are trying to hide their career gaps. They are very indecisive.

They are not sure if they should apply and all posts our um yeah, our conversational exchanges can might be, might be very useful even though it's, it's all happening online right now. Um So yeah, please feel free to share with those who might be interested and who who might be open to, to, to such a step. Sometimes it's sometimes it's difficult to, to come back to work. Uh But I, I hope, I hope that together we can make it easier.

I thank everybody for coming to our booth and hopefully this helps you make a decision and do it.

Amazing. Oh, thank you very much. I see that um that there is a mom who is looking for a PM role. Amazing. We definitely want to hear from, from your friends, from your former colleagues, from your relatives, anyone who needs help to, to return to work. Um And there should be no worries about uh being ready for this because throughout the interview process, I'm always with the candidates and I share a lot of helpful information to help them prepare to the interviews. Uh We it was still, we are still developing those materials and they are getting better and better. We collect a lot of feedback. Um But yeah, there, there is a lot of help to, to be provided and um I would be more than happy to do it. Amazing Canada, by the way, anyone who is located in Canada, uh feel free to, to apply steel because our North American team is working very hard and they might have uh expansion plans as well. So in any case, I would definitely recommend that you guys uh stay in touch. Uh we are evolving, we are getting bigger and more useful. So if you're in Canada, I think that um it would be great to connect with our North American team or with me and I would um help you with the next steps. All right. Um Just uh before we go, I would like to share my linkedin profile.

So you would be able to ask any questions to, to friend me if you will and like this, you will never miss any, any updates about the internship program. All right. Great. Thank you very much, everyone. I don't see any additional questions. That is why uh it feels like we are, we are good to go. Um Good luck with, with everything and we are looking forward to hearing from you soon.

Thank you, everyone. Thanks

everyone. Bye bye bye.