From Battalion Operations Officer to Amazon Operations Manager

I served as an Infantry Officer in the 2nd Battalion, The Mercian Regiment. The roles in which I served: Platoon Commander; Divisional Training Officer; Recon & Sniper Platoon Commander; and finally, Battalion Operations Officer (my last role). 

2 key reasons: - Firstly, everything I had read, and everything I had heard from people who worked there, made me believe that it would be a good values-based fit for me, in terms of the philosophy and ethos in which it works operationally. What appealed to me was the constant drive to do better, the determination to find and make innovative solutions, and the freedom from over-bureaucracy in the operational environment. 

- Secondly, it mirrored what I liked about the Army, in that it is a big organization, where there is freedom to move around and not be tied to one particular area. The difference, and one of the reasons why I think so many military types enjoy this aspect in particular, is that geographical and professional mobility is not dictated to you in the same way. I feel that I have so much more personal ownership of my career than I ever did in the Army. 

I joined as an Area Manager. After completing my training in Barcelona and Manchester I went to Kegworth to work as an Area Manager in the Amazon Fulfilment Engine (AFE) Area. Following Peak 2019 I moved to the Shipping Area, and I have just been successful at interview panel to promote to L6 Operations Manager, where I will be running the Outbound operation for one of the shifts in Kegworth. 

The recruitment process for me was an early indication of what life is like in Amazon. It moved astonishingly quickly, and within 2 weeks of my first conversation with the military recruiter I was given an offer of employment. It was an early lesson that in Amazon you will probably never stand still long enough to be in a comfort zone. For me, this is another key reason why military people do well: we are used to dealing with complexity, and having to relentlessly prioritize a wide range of issues; from knowing when you need to dive into detail and tackle a crunchy operational problem, to when you need to make time to prioritize your team’s development, and use your softer, people based skill set, to do that. There are many parallels. 

 I’d say that the biggest thing I’ve learned is why diversity of thought, skills, and backgrounds is so important. Amazon genuinely does diversity in a way which I have not really seen before, in that the organization actively seeks to bring in people from different backgrounds and industries, who can bring a different set of skills to the business. I used to wonder why Amazon actively hire military people and, perhaps slightly cynically, wondered if it was about being seen to ‘do the right thing’ for our veterans. I now realize that it’s predominantly because Amazon has seen that there is a group of people who have a set of skills which are extremely useful to their business. In the teams that I have worked in so far, I have worked with former doctors, pilots, people from all 3 military services, the police, lawyers, teachers, project managers, etc, etc. The key point though is that all of these people were hired because they have the common ground of being able to show that they operate within the Amazon leadership principles, but they were also hired because of, not in spite of, whatever seemingly random career they had before coming to Amazon, and that experience is seen as an asset, rather than a hindrance. 

 Until I came to Amazon I don’t think I fully appreciated the extent to which key decisions, which had shaped the path of my Army career, had been controlled by others. From Company Commanders to Commanding Officers, all had played an active part in dictating what was right for me (and in hindsight I’d say that they got it right, mostly). However, in Amazon, whilst you will certainly be supported and mentored by senior leaders, you have much more control over the direction in which you take your career. This has taken me some adjusting; I was used to far more direct career management from my seniors, and I am only now really adjusting to being able to take much more ownership for the direction in which I want my career to go. 

 I could lie here, and say that it was a well-oiled machine. However it was, frankly, quite chaotic. Plans were made and plans changed with a frequency which the military could match. I didn’t understand why at the time, but the reality is that the pace of life at Amazon can be fast and furious at time, and I was joined my building just before it launched, which was in August, so we had an aggressive ramp-up to full speed to get ready for Peak 2019. My training was being organized by teams who were just in the process of forming themselves, and the business was having to move quickly to hire and train enough people to come in and deliver results. This did not impede my experience in any way; my training was very good, and very enjoyable. I did my Associate Experience Week (AEW) in Manchester, followed by week in Barcelona (which was awesome!), and then another 3 weeks in Manchester, before I got to the Fulfilment Centre in Kegworth and got to grips with the area I had been given to manage. 

I attended the CTP career transition workshop, and got a lot of value from that; especially when it came to writing a CV and getting ready for interviews. I found the process very helpful in being able to look at what I could bring to the table from the perspective of a would-be employer. This self-assessment process certainly shaped how I used my learning credits to qualify and train in areas which I thought would make me be seen as a potentially high risk candidate by employers. For example, at the time I was looking at project management roles, but was very aware that whilst I had been managing projects in the Army for a long time, I didn’t have any formal qualification in the subject. CTP helped me to understand which of the available qualifications were best suited to the areas I was looking at.