As Amazon Gears Up To Throw 'Nation's Largest Job Fair,' How Does The Company Rate As An Employer?

Even as investors gear up for Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN's second-quarter earnings release, scheduled for Thursday, expecting the story to get bigger, an unrelated news items from the company hit the press on Wednesday.

The company said in a release that it is holding the first ever 'Amazon Jobs Day' to recruit personnel for its U.S. fulfillment network. Against the backdrop, Benzinga looked at how good of an employer the online retail behemoth is from the perspective of its employees.

Jobs Up For Grabs

The company said it has more than 50,000 roles available to be filled through the Amazon Jobs Day, touted to be the nation's largest job fair.

Amazon has also taken initiative to give heads up to potential employees concerning the working conditions at Amazon. It has planned to open 10 fulfillment centers across the U.S. on Aug. 2 from 8 a.m. to noon local time for taking them on a tour.

"Candidates can come on-site to learn more about working at Amazon and the technology it utilizes in its operations," Amazon clarified.

"The company plans to make thousands of on-the-spot job offers to qualified candidates who apply on-site as part of Amazon Jobs Day."

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Amazon indicated that the job profile includes picking, packing and shipping customer orders. Touting the attractive features of the job offerings, the company said they would involve competitive pay, health insurance and innovative benefits such as Leave Share and Ramp Back, which give new parents flexibility with their growing families.

"We're excited to be creating great jobs that offer highly-competitive wages, benefits starting on day one and the chance for employees to go back to school through our Career Choice program," said John Olsen, vice president of Amazon's Worldwide Operations Human Resources.

"On August 2, we are excited to host interested candidates to come learn more about the technology we utilize in our operations, see our dedicated onsite classrooms, meet employees and, if interested, apply for a job at our site and receive an on-the-spot job offer. These are great opportunities with runway for advancement. In fact, of our entry level managers across Amazon's U.S. fulfillment centers, nearly 15 percent started in hourly roles and were promoted into their current positions."

Amazon Slays It As An Employer

Information on Glassdoor, a website where employees and employers anonymously post reviews, showed that Amazon was rated 3.6 out of a possible 5. About 68 percent of the people who gave reviews, said they would recommend Amazon to a friend.

CEO Jeff Bezos was given a thumps up, with 83 percent approving him being the CEO. If part-timers alone were considered, only 71 percent approved of Bezos.

Captioning his review as Amazing Amazon, one of the reviewers raved about the learning and growth opportunities and the flexibility it offers to move to any field if one is talented and interested.

Regarding salaries, average annual salary reported for a Software Development Engineer II was $117,632 and that of Software Development Engineer II was $99,496. An intern Software Development Engineer at Amazon earns $6,328 per month. A full-time associate is paid $12.40 per hour, on an average, while an Amazon Warehouse Worker gets an hourly pay of $12.41.

The federal minimum wage for a covered nonexempt employee has been at $7.25 an hour since July 24, 2009.

About the interview process, reviews suggested that selection process could take anywhere from one week to four months, depending on the complexity of the job involved. Most recounted positive experience out of the interviews and responses concerning the difficulty of the interviews were mixed.

Amazon was rated 3.7 out of five from the perspective of employee benefits. Reviews suggested that the company begins to offer health insurance from the very first day and it has got 401(k) plans as well. The company also offers vacation and paid time off. There are shift differentials for night/weekend workers. Automatic pay revisions kick in once in every six months.