Amazon Is Hiring Like Crazy But Its Job Interview Is Brutal

Here's an amazing stat: Amazon hired 12,800 employees in the last three months. It now has 109,800 employees, compared to 97,000 last quarter and 81,400 a year ago, according to its quarterly earnings statement.

At 109,800, that means that Amazon employs more people worldwide than Microsoft does, notes the Next Web's Emil Protalinski, at least for the time being.

Microsoft has 99,139 at last count (June), it says. Microsoft should jump ahead again after its deal to buy Nokia's mobile business closes, probably next quarter. Microsoft is expected to gain about 32,000 Nokia employees then.

But Amazon's hiring won't be slowing down anytime soon. We found 271 pages of jobs at Amazon.com (over 5400 listings).

That doesn't mean that Amazon is an easy interview, even in the Valley where companies are tripping over themselves, and paying huge wages, for top technical talent.

One reader told us a story of a grueling 8-hour job interview, talking to nine different people for an opening at Amazon's Lab126 in Cupertino, which currently has 19 pages of job openings (over 185 jobs).

Whew.

Disclosure: Jeff Bezos is an investor in Business Insider through his personal investment company Bezos Expeditions.