Get Inspired: Stories

Fred Mossler | Zappos | Las Vegas, Nevada

I’ve been with the company since August of 1999. Today I would like to talk about one of my favorite core values, which is Pursue Growth and Learning. As it relates to our developmental pipeline – in the beginning, and I’ll speak from a merchandising perspective, we had to go outside of the company to hire buyers into the company.

It was often challenging, a lot of times we would get people in that either didn’t understand the online business or they didn’t understand the culture. We wasted a lot of resources training them, working with them, and then eventually losing them. So, we thought that maybe it was best to develop our talent internally, so we came up with a progression plan for our merchants. Essentially the progression plan is taking someone from an entry level position and developing them into a buyer level position within three years.

The progression plan is broken down into two segments, a merchandising assistance and an assistant buyer. Those two levels are broken down into three more levels, with merchandising assistant level I, level II, and level III and then a promotion to assistant buyer, then assistant buyer level I, II, and III. The reason why these are broken down into 6 month segments is to show progress to the people in those given roles. We can motivate them and they can see their progress on the way to becoming a buyer, instead of just spending three years and then at some point promoting them to buyer.

The pipeline, as we call it in merchandising, has allowed us to develop our of our talent internally, or at least a majority of it internally. It gives us a sustainable supply of buyer candidates. It makes sure that people that come in, if they are not right for the culture, they are moved out immediately with little effect to the rest of the business. The people that stay are immersed in our culture, systems, and business. As they develop they are given more and more responsibility. As they prove themselves and show promise, which ultimately is great for our business and is great for our culture, we are creating leaders amongst people that are proven and are deserving to be leaders.

Based on the success of our merchandising pipeline, just last year we rolled out a pipeline to the entire company. Now, each department in the company has its own unique pipeline to develop talent internally and our hope, as a company, is that eventually we will get to the point that from an entry level position we can develop someone into a senior leadership position within 5 – 7 years. Ultimately the leadership of Zappos will be completely – or 80% - will be developed internally. That is our long term goal with the pipeline.

Associated with the pipeline are courses that are taught that are applicable to all these different developmental pipelines in and across the company. Courses such as history, culture, finance, key books, these are all taught and anyone in any department can take these courses to pursue growth and learning and their own personal development within the company and progress up the pipeline at their speed and with their own initiative.