Amazon hiring in Wal-Mart country

Amazon.com is looking for tech workers in the heart of Wal-Mart country.

The Seattle-based online giant is hosting a reception as part of a hiring event in Bentonville on Wednesday, according to a post on the company's website. Members of Amazon's Health, Safety, Security, Sustainability and Compliance team, as well as Amazon Global Logistics and Amazon Fulfillment Technology teams will be in attendance.

The reception will be held at the Doubletree Suites by Hilton hotel, a few miles from Wal-Mart's home office.

"We're coming to you to make it easier for you to learn more about Amazon and the variety of career opportunities, teams, projects and what it is like living in Seattle and or Austin," Amazon said in the job posting. "We will be meeting with potential candidates and answering your questions about the challenges we have waiting for you!"

Amazon did not respond to requests for comment about the event. Bentonville Mayor Bob McCaslin and Dana Davis, president of the Greater Bentonville Chamber of Commerce, said Monday they had no knowledge of the event.

But its location in the backyard of its biggest retail rival provides another development in an intensifying competition.

Wal-Mart has been busy snapping up online companies -- like the $310 million acquisition of men's clothing retailer Bonobos earlier this month -- to improve its e-commerce business and better compete with Amazon. The company has also introduced initiatives like free two-day shipping on $35 minimum orders and a pickup discount, which offers cheaper prices on products that are ordered online and picked up in stores.

Meanwhile, Amazon announced a significant step into brick-and-mortar retail as well as the grocery industry with the $13.7 billion acquisition of Whole Foods earlier this month. The move has been widely viewed as a threat to Wal-Mart because grocery sales account for about 56 percent of the retailer's revenue.

Henry Ho, co-founder and chief strategy officer of Fayetteville-based mobile research and retail data collection firm Field Agent, compared Amazon's plan to hold the event in Bentonville to Target's decision to open its first Northwest Arkansas store several years ago.

"This is a little different," Ho said. "It's not like they're putting in a physical presence, but they know exactly what they're doing. They're coming to the backyard and hoping to pick up, probably, some Wal-Mart-types who have insight into Wal-Mart's ways. I think it just sticks a little bit of a pin under Wal-Mart's skin."

The window of registering for the four-hour reception has closed. Positions mentioned in Amazon's job hiring event announcement include data engineers, data scientists, software development engineers, senior product managers in cross-border export logistics and quality assurance engineers.

It's not clear if Amazon is trying to fill positions that will be based in or near Northwest Arkansas or if the jobs will require workers to relocate. But there are tech workers in Northwest Arkansas looking for employment after Wal-Mart laid off hundreds from its information systems division as part of the company's restructuring efforts earlier this year.

Amazon said in January it would add 100,000 full-time jobs in the U.S. with full benefits over an 18-month period. The company said many positions would be at its newest fulfillment centers, while other positions would cover fields like cloud technology, machine learning and advanced logistics.

"If you want people who have retail systems backgrounds, this is a pretty natural place to come, especially in light of the recent downsizing or changes that have taken place," Ho said of Northwest Arkansas. "It just makes sense."

Business on 06/27/2017

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