Delivering Happiness

Pipeline
Many corporations like to say that their people are their most important
asset. There are a few problems with that approach. First, as soon as
someone leaves, you’ve lost an asset. Second, if the company grows, then
there may come a time later down the line when the company outgrows an
employee because the employee still has the same skill set that he had when
he first joined. When that happens, usually the solution in a lot of other
companies is to bring in a more experienced employee from outside the
company, which presents a third challenge: That new employee often may
not be a culture fit.
Our philosophy at Zappos is different. Rather than focusing on
individuals as assets, we instead focus on building as our asset a pipeline of
people in every single department with varying levels of skills and
experience, ranging from entry level all the way up through senior
management and leadership positions. Our vision is for almost all of our
hires to be entry level, but for the company to provide all the training and
mentorship necessary so that any employee has the opportunity to become a
senior leader within the company within five to seven years. For us, this is
still a work in progress, but we’re really excited about its future.
Without continually growing and learning both personally and
professionally, it’s unlikely that any individual employee will still be with

---

the company ten years from now. Our goal at Zappos is for our employees
to think of their work not as a job or career, but as a calling.
Our pipeline strategy started when we first moved to Vegas in 2004.
Even though Vegas was great for hiring for our call center, we found it
challenging to convince merchandisers and buyers who had years of
industry experience to move from places such as Los Angeles or New York
to Las Vegas. So we decided to start training and growing our own
merchants from the ground up.
Today, nearly all of the hires for our merchandising department are for
entry-level merchandising assistants. We have a three-year merchant
development program where merchandising assistants are trained, certified,
and given increasing portfolio responsibilities as well as put into
management and leadership roles.
At the entry level, all we really care about is if they are passionate about
the category of product their team is responsible for. For our couture team,
we hire people who love reading fashion magazines. For our running team,
we hire marathoners. For our outdoors team, we hire people who regularly
go hiking and camping on weekends.
Over a three-year period, merchandising assistants are promoted to
assistant buyers and then to buyers. (After three years, they can go on to
become senior buyers, directors, and eventually VPs.)
Our pipeline philosophy has been incredibly successful within our
merchandising department, and we’ve spent the past year working on
rolling out similar programs for all of our departments.
There are specific training programs that are unique to each department,
but we also have a Pipeline Team that offers courses for all departments.
Many of the courses are required in order for an employee to be promoted
to certain levels within the company, regardless of which department he or
she may be in.