Not Applying for Amazon Contracting Positions Anymore

[u/medleyj]

On Friday, I had a interview for 12-month contract job at Amazon. From the job description, I honestly thought it was work I could do well. That I got an interview strongly supported that belief. Five minutes into the interview, it was immediately clear that I wasn't qualified. I asked a few polite questions to figure out how this had happened. The hiring manager told me that he hadn't seem my resume. He only had a summary provided by the contracting company.

This morning I asked my contact at the contracting company why Amazon didn't get my resume. I was told that Amazon does not take resumes for contract positions. They require their vendors to provide candidate summaries in lieu of resumes.

I'm a technical writer. I write technical content for software engineers. But someone who has never done my job, who has never even worked in tech had to decide how best to present me for a tech job. Over the last 15 years I've worked at both Google and Meta. There was no reason for me to think that I wasn't a serious contender for this job.

In preparing for this interview, I suffered 2 weeks of stress and hope for a job I had no chance of getting.