How does Amazon stay Amazon with 1.5 million employees? Through a rigorous hiring process they call the Bar Raiser.

And there are four things every growing business should learn and apply to their hiring.

In the book, Working Backwards, former Amazon leaders Colin Bryar and Bill Carr write about the 14 Leadership Principles and the processes that came from them that made Amazon one of the most valuable companies in the world.

Principle #6 is “Hire and Develop the best,” which they do through the Bar Raiser hiring process.

The process was adopted once Bezos, who handled all interviewing and hiring in the early days, couldn’t participate in every interview.

It’s called the Bar Raiser, because they want every new hire to raise the bar at Amazon. They want their employees to say to themselves, ‘I’m glad I joined when I did. If I interviewed for a job today, I’m not sure I’d be hired!”

The Bar Raiser is the name of both the entire hiring process and a group of people – Bar Raisers – that are central to the process.

Here are the four things you should take from Amazon and apply to your hiring process.

1. Have a process. Nothing impacts your culture more than hiring. Without a repeatable, formal process, you are essentially saying that you don’t care about your culture.
2. Slow hiring down. Hiring is almost always hampered by urgency bias – the desire to fill a position as quickly as possible. Amazon puts several checks in place to counter that and other human biases. Only 1 in 4 pass the phone screen because they don’t progress if the screener wouldn’t hire them based on the phone interview. The Bar Raiser can overrule the hiring manager and veto any candidate. Why? Because the hiring manager might be influenced by urgency. The Bar Raiser is only concerned with making sure bad hires are avoided.
3. Make culture the standard for hiring. Amazon’s standard is their Leadership Principles – their culture. They involve 5-7 people in “the Interview Loop” – a 5-7 hour in-house interview process following the phone screen. Each member of the interview panel takes one or more of the 14 Amazon Leadership Principles and asks a series of pre-determined questions to learn how the candidate accomplished their goals and whether their methods align with the Leadership Principles.
4. Provide coaching and training. Amazon’s Bar Raisers receive special training but everyone involved in the hiring process must complete Amazon’s half-day course on the on process and how to conduct an interview. In many of the hiring debrief sessions, the Bar Raiser spends more time coaching and teaching than they do assessing the candidate.

Don’t leave your hiring to chance. If you want to grow AND maintain the culture that has made you successful, develop a hiring process and train everyone involved to administer it so that you avoid urgency bias and candidates who aren’t a cultural fit.

And who knows? Maybe one day you’ll be running one of the most valuable companies in the world.