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- Amazon is hiring in South Africa again, and it wants to talk to people with only matric and a year’s experience in a call centre or retail.
- Some of the jobs are in Cape Town, others are work from home.
- It also wants seasonal workers on 3-month contracts.
- The jobs all pay around R13 000 per month.
- For more financial news, go to the News24 Business front page.
Amazon may (or may not) be laying off thousands of employees in other countries. But in South Africa, it is hiring again. And it is not looking for a lot of education or experience.
In recent days, Amazon has posted job ads for two different kinds of roles: technical support associates, who help customers troubleshoot either online services or devices such as Kindles, and customer service associates, who will act as the first point of contact for Amazon customers in North America and the UK who reach out for help.
Some of those workers are to be based in a Cape Town facility, others will work from home.
Amazon is looking for both permanent staffers and people to sign up for three-month contracts, to deal with spikes in seasonal demand. Those typically span the Christmas period.
In all cases, employees will be expected to work at least occasional late, overnight, and weekend shifts, serving customers in other timezones.
All the jobs pay R67.35 per hour with an expected 40-hour week, which comes to roughly R13 000 per month.
Job requirements: matric, and a year of experience
The preconditions to apply are not particularly onerous. To get one of the jobs, you have to be at least 18 and have matric or equivalent. On top of that, Amazon is looking for one year of experience, ideally in tech support for the more technical roles, but also in a call centre or in “high-end retail”.
Good English, both written and spoken, is a requirement, as is computer proficiency.
During previous hiring rounds, some successful applicants had worked as shop-floor assistants or as cashiers in stores.
For work-from-home jobs, Amazon requires a fixed-line internet connection with a speed of at least 10Mbps down and 5Mbps up.
Unlike previous local Amazon hiring sprees, the company has not said whether it is looking for 150 people or 3 000 people. As per usual, Amazon did not respond to a request for comment, including on the number of open positions.
South Africa’s official unemployment rate is at about a third of the population, but some large companies are rapidly scaling up even as their rich-country equivalents – and sometimes sibling companies – retrench large swathes of workers in anticipation of a medium-term economic slowdown.
Last week, Shoprite, the biggest employer in SA outside government, said it had hired 3 881 more people in its last half year, and it plans to open more than 400 new stores this year.
Amazon has a habit of removing or changing its job ads, but at the time of writing the job details – and application forms – could be found here:
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