Amazon Wants You Back After Firing You (The AI Recruitment Scam)
Recruiters are hunting former staff for cloud and AI roles amid massive layoffs
The corporate ledger absorbs the expense of separation, then seeks to recover the sunk cost of human capital. Amazon has cut more than 30000 jobs in multiple rounds of layoffs over the past year, among the largest workforce reductions in its history. Now the company is tapping its alumni network in the fight for AI talent against the likes of Google, OpenAI, Meta, and Anthropic.
Recruiters are reaching out to eligible former employees about open roles across Amazon, including in its cloud computing and AI businesses, according to emails obtained by Business Insider. One outreach last month featured Amazon's AI agent organization, led by AWS VP Swami Sivasubramanian. He invited former employees in AI and machine learning fields to discuss new roles through what a recruiter called "Swami's Boomerang Reengagement Initiative."
The email strategy relies on leverage. Amazon is reaching out to former workers whose experience it already knows, offering some a faster route back to the fold. In another case, an AWS Finance recruiter offered a former employee a shortened path back to an offer and asked whether Amazon's return to office policy had driven the employee away. "A lot has changed since you were here, and there's some really compelling work happening across AI/ML right now," one of the emails stated.
Returning employees made up 35% of US new hires in March 2025, up from 31% a year earlier, according to ADP payroll data. In the tech sector, they accounted for nearly two-thirds of new hires. Boomerangs can bring hard to find skills while getting up to speed faster than outside hires. The email from the AWS Finance recruiter shows that Amazon's outreach extends beyond AI to include general roles.
Haley Silva, an Amazon spokesperson, told Business Insider that boomerang hiring is a normal, longstanding companywide practice, not a new program limited to AI or cloud computing. Silva said eligible former workers can include people Amazon laid off, but that the company is recruiting for open roles and is not specifically targeting employees who left because of RTO. Amazon's in office expectations remain unchanged, she added.
Amazon has floated rehiring laid off employees before. In 2023, AWS's Human Resources VP Ian Wilson told employees that many workers affected by the company's job cuts were eligible for rehire. He said Amazon should consider how to "proactively extend an invitation" to former employees who wanted to return. Amazon's RTO policy has been a persistent talent challenge.
Boomerang hiring has risen as employers turn to former workers. The recruiter also asked whether RTO had been a primary reason for leaving, saying the response would help Amazon tailor future outreach to the worker's remote work and location preferences. "Please know that I'm sensitive to these concerns," the recruiter wrote.
First reported by Eugene Kim.
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