What does "bar raiser" mean?

"bar raiser ":pole lifter.

knowledge extension:

the concept of "barraiser" comes from Amazon's headquarters in the United States, which originally refers to the staff who raise the pole again and again in the high jump competition. In Amazon, "bar raiser" is a group of people who are responsible for examining candidates from the perspective of Amazon's corporate culture and code of conduct during the recruitment process, so as to maintain the recruitment quality. In recruitment, "bar raiser" will use a very harsh eye to examine whether the candidate is higher than the average ability level of Amazon in at least one point. If so, then hiring such a person is actually equivalent to improving the company's ability, which plays a role of "lifting the pole".

after the acquisition, joyo Amazon began to set up a "bar raiser", but it was around 27 that this system was really put into practice. The first batch of real "pole lifters" were nominated by Amazon's "bar raiser" and HR in the United States, and then the first batch of "pole lifters" became mentors, and gradually cultivated the second batch of "pole lifters" who were excellent in Amazon. Today, Joyo Amazon has more than 2 "pole lifters" distributed in various departments of the company, and they are often regarded as employees who have a deep understanding of Amazon culture. In all the interviews, you can see these "grabbers".

"The interview in Amazon is very' wild'. At the end of the day, seven or eight people will interview you separately, and the average person can't bear it." In Joyo Amazon, the business supervisor, HR and bar raiser are the most basic interview examiner configurations for each job, and in addition, the business department heads related to the job will also join them. For example, when recruiting a product manager, the head of the marketing department will come forward to inspect the marketing awareness of the candidate, while the finance department will focus on the basic data analysis ability. All interviews are one-on-one, each session lasts at least 45 minutes, and some positions need to be interviewed by telephone from American headquarters. After a day of fatigue bombing, candidates are "killed" from time to time.

However, among all interviewers, only the business director and "bar raiser" have the right to decide whether to hire or not, and the conclusions of HR and relevant departments are only used as opinions for their reference. Therefore, "bar raiser" is equivalent to having a veto power in the interview. If you can't win the consent of "bar raiser", the business director will often be rejected if he looks at the good talents. Many business executives in Amazon have similar experiences with Guo Zhaohui.

This logic once made it difficult for Guo Zhaohui to adapt: in order to cooperate with the expansion of product categories, Guo Zhaohui often needed to recruit managers in charge of different product lines. Whether he had rich industry experience and resources and was able to quickly select products and goods became the most important trait of Guo Zhaohui when recruiting. Because of this, Guo admitted that he had been "approved badly".

"In Amazon, industry experience only ranks second in the recruitment principles, and' Barraiser' will often cast a negative vote from the perspective of Amazon's culture and code of conduct." Guo Zhaohui said. For example, in Amazon's view, employees must have basic data analysis skills. Because for buyers of a certain product line, the most common decision to make is how to stock up. In traditional enterprises, buyers often rely on their own experience to make judgments, but in Amazon, buyers need to write a small program to pull out all the sales historical data of this product and do simple data processing to support their own judgments.

"There are many such tools in Amazon. No matter how good a buyer is, if he can only drink and eat, but he can't get started in front of system and data analysis, he will be disappointed to leave in three or four months." Today, Guo Zhaohui has begun to understand the value of "bar raiser".