Apprentice to Eccentric Millionaire. Become an Amazon Expert [CLOSED]

- Is learning new things like crack to you?

- Do you get joy out of tweaking and optimizing things relentlessly?

- Do you thrive in a high-stress environment filled with political infighting, bureaucracy, and corporate nonsense?

If so, then we are the place for you, except you might hate how nice of a company we have - filled with happy, generally competent people that don’t put up with jerks. Frankly, it makes me sick how nice everyone is.

We are remote full time, have very flexible hours, people are judged by their output, not by how much they suck up to the boss, and turnover is super low because the company believes that happy employees = happy customers = happy bank account. Simply disgusting, if you ask me.

--Is this a real job ad?--

Yup! Amazingly enough, we actually paid money to post this on a bunch of different job sites. And it’s not even a pyramid scheme! Plus, get this: the owner just started paying our 60ish employees with money instead of Pizza Hut coupons - we’re big time, people.

Our careers page is actually worth checking out to learn more about how insane we are (sidenote: it won a web design award in 1993 - we’re a pretty big deal):

http://www.jlstradingco.com/careers/

And check out our reviews on Google, Glassdoor, or Indeed to see that it’s not just the founder’s mother who says we’re cool.

--What do you guys do?--

We sell a lot of different things but our primary focus now is developing/engineering from scratch very cool products in a variety of niches.

A small sampling:

- Bad Parking Cards (https://amz.run/5Eya)

- Steak Weights (https://amz.run/6kin)

- Beverage Barricades (https://amz.run/6kip)

Our business is growing rapidly every year, and it’s our intention to continue that for as long as possible, which means we need good people to help us keep up with the growth.

--What is your company like?--

1. Full Time Remote/Flexible Hours. You will be working from home in your pajamas, on your schedule. And we don’t care if you work 10 hour days 4 days a week or want to catch up on the weekend. So long as you get a lot of work done, we’re happy campers.

2. Complete Work/Life Balance. If you’re routinely working more than 45ish hours, you’re gonna get a friendly talking-to. We want you to be operating at 100% capacity, which means that you need to rest.

3. You Can Be Yourself. You don’t have to put on a fake, professional face. You can just be yourself. You can talk smack to the CEO, and no one will think anything of it.

4. Major Opportunities for Career Growth. We are not trying to just be a small business. We plan to be doing $100 million annually in the next few years. We promote quickly once we identify talent. It doesn’t matter what your credentials are – it matters what you get done.

5. Strongly Anti-BS. Anybody in the company can (and is expected to) tell the CEO when he is wrong. There are no bureaucratic or BS rules getting in the way of getting work done.

6. No Micro-Management. Once you’re trained and have demonstrated you know your stuff, we are pretty hands-off. In fact, if you need external management to stay on-task and motivated, we probably aren’t the place for you.

7. Supportive Environment. We don’t operate via intense stress or unreasonable top-down deadlines. Everyone wants you to be successful – internal politics are at a minimum here.

8. No Toxic People Allowed. We try very hard to screen out mean people before they get in, but in case they slip through, we fire them quickly. Imagine never having to interact with toxic people at work - how nice would that be?

9. We’ll Invest in Your Training. We want you and everyone to get better constantly. You’ll be learning new things all the time, and are strongly encouraged to invest time every day to learn new things, improve your system/work process, and just generally try to make your life easier.

10. Four+ Weeks Vacation. We 100% want you to recharge, so having plenty of time off is absolutely worth it.

11. Self-Funded So We Can Do What’s Right for Us. We don’t have to answer to anyone but ourselves, so we can make the right decision for the long-term health of the company vs trying to get big too fast or cut corners to appease some selfish investor.

--What are your company’s values?--

See here: http://www.jlstradingco.com/careers/

Yes, those are legitimately our values. The careers page is definitely worth checking out - it’s not just normal corporate BS. We promise you’ll learn a lot about us.

--OK, so I’ve read like 8 dang pages about you guys. Will you tell me what the actual job is?--

No.

--Wait... What?--

OK fine. Super short version:

Learning how the Amazon marketplace works for sellers until you can eventually be responsible for the whole system (way down the road). We’ll teach you basically everything you need to know, so it doesn’t matter if you have never dealt with Amazon management before.

You’re (eventually) gonna be:

- The resident expert on Amazon

- Evaluating SKUs and deciding what actions should be taken to maximize profitability

- Continually consuming new knowledge about the platform, trying to find new ways to optimize

- Building systems to monitor and improve everything (good luck managing thousands of SKUs without robust systems)

- Training others how to do the work for you so you can focus on system improvements that will improve performance across our whole portfolio of products

- Figuring out different levers to pull to make more money, how to best pull them, then build a system and training materials around them, so we can scale pulling those levers across thousands of SKUs

This is a big job, and there is an absolute boatload to learn.

We’ll teach you everything you need to know, but you have to know that we’re basically aiming to build you into an executive in the company. We want to find the person to be responsible for this marketplace long-term, which hopefully you’ll be!

--Do I need experience?--

We expect you to have a minimum of 70 years of experience (120+ preferred).

Oh, you haven't lived two lifetimes eating and breathing Amazon 24/7/365? Who TF do you think you are, reading this job description? You absolute buffoon.

Oh, you haven't been directly involved in at least two (preferably three) World Wars? You're not even qualified to operate our coffee machine, you sentient potato.

Oh, you didn't observe the Big Bang as it happened? Get out of here, you pirated copy of Windows 95.

I am gonna literally throw up from the mere thought of your hubris, that you could apply for this position. Absolutely sickening.

Also, no you don't need any experience.

We want special people, and don’t give AF what their background is. Most of our best people did nothing remotely related to their current roles, so if you've never done anything like this before, don't sweat it. We hire 100x more for potential than existing knowledge. The Big Bang requirement still stands though.

--Do I need a college degree?--

You just need to be awesome.

--Do I need to have sold on Amazon before?--

Nope.

--I don’t know anything about E-Commerce?--

As long as you love learning, we’ll teach you everything you need to know (or support you in figuring out who can teach you).

--I am not great with math?--

This role doesn’t require calculus or anything like that, but you will definitely be looking at spreadsheets of data and performing mathematical analysis on it (nothing too fancy). If you hate math, this probably isn’t the role for you, but you don’t have to love math to be successful, either.

--This sounds pretty good, though I’m still skeptical that this isn’t a pyramid scheme.--

You sound just like our tax auditor!

--That doesn’t resolve any of my fears, but what do I need to do to apply?--

Please submit your information on the following page once you click Apply.

We promise to respond within 5-10 business days even if our answer is No.

There will be multiple steps in this process, FYI, including a long written application, interviews with potentially a few different people, and paid work test(s). Hiring the right people is really hard and very expensive if we do it poorly, so we have to front-load the process. I'm sorry about that and thank you for sticking with us.

Once you’re in our pipeline though, I would anticipate giving you a final answer within a few weeks, depending on how it goes. We definitely don’t want to string you along, and as long as you do what we ask, we promise to tell you “yes” or “no”, and to not just ghost you (like everybody I match with on Tinder).

Thank you for your time and interest, and I hope we can work together soon!

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JLS Trading Co. provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability or genetics. In addition to federal law requirements, JLS Trading Co. complies with applicable state and local laws governing nondiscrimination in employment in every location in which the company has facilities. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation and training.

JLS Trading Co. expressly prohibits any form of workplace harassment based on race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, genetic information, disability, or veteran status. Improper interference with the ability of JLS Trading Co.’s employees to perform their job duties may result in discipline up to and including discharge