Amazon announces 1st virtual 'Career Day' with plans to hire 33,000 corporate, tech jobs
Online retail giant Amazon has created a free, first-of-its-kind virtual career fair that could help attendees land a six-figure job and one-on-one career coaching.
Amazon announced the plans for the first virtual "career day" exclusively to ABC News and shared the full details for the event on Sept. 16.
It will include interactive workshops, speaker sessions and for 20,000 people, one-on-one career coaching sessions.
The retailer will also hire 33,000 new corporate and technology workers at an average compensation of $150,000, which includes salary and stock, the company said.
"COVID-19 continues to affect millions of people across the country, and people are eager for the opportunity to get back to work," Beth Galetti, SVP of Amazon Human Resources said in a press release. "We’ve created more jobs in the U.S. over the past decade than any other company – and we are continuing to hire people from all backgrounds and at all skill levels. We are glad to be able to mobilize more than 1,000 experienced recruiters and HR professionals to help job seekers across the country learn about opportunities at Amazon and elsewhere."
Amazon is looking to build on the success of last year's Career Day events across six U.S. cities that hosted 17,000 job seekers with over 200,000 people who applied for jobs in the week leading up to the event.
The new completely virtual event will open Amazon Career Day 2020 to everyone, regardless of their location.
Some of the new employees will be placed at Amazon's HQ2 in Arlington, Virginia, which is continuing to expand following its opening last year.
With over 29 million Americans filing for unemployment, many are still searching for work.
Catherine Fisher, a career expert at LinkedIn, told ABC News that "industries that are hiring are the industries that are helping the U.S. navigate this new normal."
"So it's transportation and logistics. It's health care. It's retail," she explained. "We're seeing lots of demand for software, I.T., really jobs that are helping us figure out how to work from home, school from home, etc."
More companies that have continued to hire include Instacart, Lowes and Walmart.
Some of the most in-demand skills listed in 83% of job postings, according to LinkedIn, included data science, data storage technologies and technical support.
"It really depends on the company, but a lot of these jobs don't require four-year degrees," Fisher said. "A lot of companies that we're seeing that are hiring, CVS Health, Instacart, IBM, Space X, they have a lot of jobs right now that they're hiring for."
And now major tech companies such as Google and IBM are offering training for in-demand tech skills and high-growth jobs that don't require a college degree.
Additionally, the nonprofit Year Up also offers six months of in-demand tech and skills training followed by an internship at a top company.
For more information about Career Day 2020 and how to register visit amazon.jobs/careerday.
