Amazon Expands Hours for Tuesday's Career Day in Arlington

Amazon is expanding hours for Tuesday's Amazon Career Day in Arlington, Virginia, where it's building a second headquarters. The event is designed to share more information about available positions.

The online shopping giant is aiming to hire more than 30,000 people across the country by early next year. Amazon is looking for all kinds of workers, from software engineers, who can earn more than $100,000 a year, to warehouse staff paid at least $15 an hour to pack and ship online orders.

Doors are now scheduled to open at 8 a.m., and the event will now continue until 8 p.m., according to a schedule on its hiring site. People were already beginning to line up before dawn. However, organizers say registration for the event is already at full capacity, so anyone who hasn't already registered to attend should instead find more information about Amazon jobs online here.

The company has said all the positions are full-time and come with benefits. And the hiring spree is not related to the usual increase in hiring it does to prepare for the busy holiday shopping season. 

Amazon Career Day will take place in six locations where it thinks it can find the strongest talent, but the expanded hours will only be offered in Arlington, according to online schedules. 

Arlington's event will be held at The Grounds (1102 S. Eads St.) in Crystal City. Events will also be held in Boston; Chicago; Dallas; Nashville, Tennessee; and Amazon's hometown of Seattle from 11:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. The company has more details on its hiring website.

No one will be hired on the spot. Instead, the events will offer a chance to engage with Amazon about open positions.

Amazon has said about 1,000 recruiters will help candidates apply for positions, prepare them for job interviews and give them more information on the roles. Candidates will be able to build interview skills and learn what it's like to work at Amazon.

"The perfect candidate is a builder. It's someone who likes to roll up their sleeves, work collaboratively to solve problems for customers, to experiment and to work with a group of people who are like-minded," Ardine Williams, vice president of Workforce Development for Amazon, told News4. "And the jobs that are available, really, I'd be surprised if we didn't have a job for just about everyone."

The high number of job openings, which Amazon said is the most it's had at one time, shows how fast the company is growing. Started as an online bookstore more than two decades ago, Amazon now produces movies, makes voice-activated gadgets and has plans to send satellites into space to provide internet service.

Amazon already has more than 650,000 employees worldwide, making it the second-biggest U.S.-based private employer behind Walmart Inc. And that number will likely rise: Amazon's second headquarters in Arlington is expected to employ 25,000 people in the next 12 years. The company has also moved into more industries, including health care and advertising.

"I encourage anyone willing to think big and move fast to apply for a job with us," said Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos, in a statement to the Associated Press. "You'll get to invent and see Amazon making even bolder bets on behalf of our customers." 

Amazon hopes Career Day will create some buzz and bring in candidates with the skills it needs. Thousands of people showed up for nationwide job fairs it held two years ago for warehouse workers.

The events may be a necessity for Amazon. With unemployment near a 50-year low, workers have more options and employers need to work harder to fill empty positions. Earlier this summer, Amazon announced a program to get more of its employees into tech roles, pledging to retrain 100,000 workers with new skills.