AWS launches skills-based hiring to grow opportunities for talent

Many of the students the Skills Based Hiring Program team has interacted with over the last year simply haven’t realized there were roles available in the tech industry for people with community college degrees. Through collaborations with community colleges near Amazon’s two U.S. headquarters—in Seattle, Washington and Arlington, Virginia—the team has been focused on clarifying misconceptions about tech careers for students and faculty.

“Most think you need a traditional four-year university or master’s degree, so this education component has been really important,” said Jeffrey Barlow, a senior recruiting program manager on the Skills-Based Hiring Program team. “To help these students see a path to a high-paying job in the cloud without having $150,000 or more in student loan debt, this is the stuff that gets me excited about this work."

Within AWS, the Skills-Based Hiring Program team is working to educate hiring managers, too. As AWS always looks to hire talent that raises the bar for whatever function they’ll be performing, the program leaders are working with AWS business stakeholders to carefully select the job families and roles where removing bachelor’s degree requirements makes sense.

"Our initiative isn't about excluding those with four-year degrees; it's about embracing a broader spectrum of talent,” said Stacy Penright, community engagement principal for AWS Talent Acquisition who is leading the Skills Based Hiring Program. “Expanding beyond conventional pathways allows us to tap into nontraditional talent pools and provide opportunities to underrepresented communities. Ultimately, our goal is to identify and nurture potential, regardless of traditional qualifications, and foster an environment where all employees can thrive."

The Skills Based Hiring program, in conjunction with AWS’s Skills to Jobs Tech Alliance, aims to launch a flexible micro-internship work option for students at Seattle Colleges and Northern Virginia Community College in 2024. The paid micro-internships would involve short-term projects, lasting between five to 40 hours and offering real-world professional experience that may not otherwise be available to students outside four-year universities.

“We’re still working through the details, but this would be a novel part of the program,” Barlow said. “Students would get paid AWS experience, which would include a capstone project where they’re coming away with a credential that makes them more employable at AWS or another company that uses AWS technology.”  

The Skills-Based Hiring Program team recently convened an advisory panel made up of AWS principal engineers—Amazon's most senior engineers—from nontraditional backgrounds, many of whom don’t have traditional four-year degrees. The panel will help inform and advise as the team shapes future program goals and objectives.

One of those advisors is Oscar Valenzuela, an AWS principal open-source engineer who has been an Amazonian since 2014. He studied electronics engineering after high school but never finished his education because of the expense. Instead, he focused on building his career through work experience and growing skills.

“I discovered the world of open source, which allowed me to obtain access to mentorship from community leaders and build myself a learning path around software development, Linux, program management, technical leadership, and telecommunications,” Valenzuela said. “Thanks to the skills I gained over 10 years working in open source, I was finally able to afford to obtain a bachelor’s degree in software and informatics.”

While Valenzuela ended up getting a bachelor’s degree before joining Amazon, over the last 10 years he has worked with other developers who have risen through the ranks without traditional degrees. He also adds a valuable perspective to the advisory panel as someone who worked his way up as an open-source developer for 10 years without a four-year degree.

“Every person has walked a different path, and sometimes a degree doesn’t properly convey all the skills and knowledge a person has gained through experience and skill-building,” Valenzuela said. “At AWS, no matter what background you have, you have the same opportunities to grow your career as any other engineer.”

The Skills-Based Hiring Program team is looking to the advisory panel to learn more about the obstacles they faced in their careers, and how they eventually broke through to gain tech career opportunities. Janene Lopez-Fairfield, a senior recruiting program manager on the Skills-Based Hiring Program team, said the panel can help shine some light on how the program can remove these obstacles for early-career talent while ensuring that AWS upholds its high talent bar standards.

"The panel members are passionate about what we're doing because it directly relates to their own experiences," she said, "and their understanding that there is bar-raising talent out there who haven't come through a traditional four-year university path."

Another benefit of the Skills Based Hiring Program is its potential to increase equity in hiring practices. By diversifying early-career talent hiring channels and reducing business reliance on the shrinking four-year student population, Lopez-Fairfield said the program contributes to the early-career talent team’s mission to hire diverse builders from all backgrounds who can thrive at AWS.

“This is forward-looking work that will support people who have the talent and skills to enhance our workforce, but just haven’t had the same opportunities,” Lopez-Fairfield said. “This helps open doors for them, and I feel very fortunate to be working on something so meaningful. We’re trying to create equity, give people more opportunities, and build a diverse workforce that’s sustainable over time.”

Through a collaboration with Amazon’s community impact team, which builds long-term programs to strengthen the communities where Amazon employees live and work, the Skills-Based Hiring Program has secured a $340,000 grant to launch a micro-internship through Northern Virginia Community College. The micro-internships, expected to launch this spring or summer, would support 400 community college students by 2025 with paid AWS cloud experience.

To get a better sense of what his customers’ needs are, the Skills Based Hiring Program team has been talking to at least one intern per week. The team recently met a man who had a thriving beauty salon business that was completely disrupted when COVID hit. The man was interested in technology and decided to move across the country to pursue a two-year degree at Northern Virginia Community College with a goal of securing an internship at an AWS data center.

“Here’s this person who has gone through a lot of friction and a lot of drive to come to AWS. And I think that in itself—the journey traveled—has some merit to it that we need to consider,” Wisner said. “And I think these are the builders that can raise the bar for Amazon and AWS.”  

Are you interested in developing your tech skills through one of AWS’s early-career talent programs? Learn more about Tech U, Work-Based Learning Programs, or opportunities for students and recent graduates.