DREAMS OF FLIGHT
“Since I was a child, I’ve always wanted to be a pilot,” says Jim Mullin, Chief Pilot at Amazon Prime Air. “Even to this day, if there’s an airplane or a helicopter in the sky overhead, I’m looking up at it. I can’t help but not look up and watch it.”
This childhood fascination with flying machines became, as Mullin says, one of the driving factors of his life purpose and successful career. It certainly inspired his joining the Marine Corps and serving 21 years as a helicopter pilot.
Mullin followed that career with a stint on the Presidential helicopter team for President Obama from 2010 to 2014. It was during this period that Jeff Bezos came to the White House and committed to hiring 25,000 veterans.
“So I kept that in my mind for when it came time to retire from the military, which I did in 2016,” Mullin recalls. “And I decided to try Amazon based on that commitment to hiring veterans.”
“I did something for twenty-one years straight. And now I was going back into a new world,” he remembers. It’s a transition that can be a true shock to the system, with the necessary rigidity of military life replaced by a world full of challenges and choices.
THE TRANSITION
“If someone is transitioning out of the military, there’s a large number of veterans at Amazon who are happy to help others come into the company and talk them through the process,” Mullin says. “So I connected with them, and they were able to help me and talk me through Amazon’s unique way of hiring.”
One of the veterans Mullin new at Amazon worked at a fulfillment center in Connecticut and invited him there on a tour.
“And it all worked out. I ended up going to a brand-new fulfillment center in Massachusetts.”
That said, dreams of flight are a reality of Mullin’s life, and inside he knew his destiny had to be in the air.
“I knew that I would eventually get back into aviation somehow,” he says, “Because Amazon had also announced by then their drone program.”
Mullin had also helped participate in standing up new programs that would ease that transition from military to civilian, as Amazon ramped up their commitment to hire a substantial amount of veterans – a goal that has since been upped to 50,000 veterans hired.
“And they then came up with the Military Pathways program to also ease that transition,” he continues. “If you come in as an operations leader, the key component in the Pathways program is they would bring you in one level lower than leadership initially, but still at your same operations leader pay and responsibilities. And then they let you learn the business for a few months, and then and then put you into the role for which you were hired.”
“Once you learn the fulfillment business, you can go elsewhere in Amazon to another job and expand your horizons from there, which is what I did,” he explains.
THE DRONE PROGRAM
Mullin worked at that Massachusetts fulfillment center for two and a half years, serving as an operations manager. Then, positions in the primary drone program began to open up, and he applied and found himself in the role of test pilot.
Today, we sit down with Mullin to discuss the appeal of Amazon’s culture to military veterans.
“Coming from the culture of the Marine Corps, we had our leadership principles over there. And then coming to Amazon, it was almost a natural transition, because Amazon has its leadership principles,” he says. “To my understanding, most companies’ leadership principles are lip service, whereas Amazon’s are embedded in the culture from day one.”
Living by those leadership principles day in and day out does create a common culture across the company, Mullin tells us, with the same language being spoken from fulfillment operations to the drone program.
“And really what that means is, you’re taking a vehicle trip off the road and it’s being delivered by an electric drone to your backyard instead. So it’s better for the environment as well, and you get it faster. It’s a win for everyone,” Mullin says. “You know, drone delivery is very real, and it’s coming. People’s eyes light up when they hear that, because we all heard as kids the promise of flying cars in the future, and about all this sort of future tech, and this is really part of that.”
LEADERSHIP
As for his own management style, Mullin says he is “brutally honest with everyone that I talk to about the drone program. You know where we’re at, where we’re going, and that really clears the air. If they have questions about the future, nobody is wondering, because I’ve told the truth.”
He says this means people at Amazon Prime Air and the larger Amazon know where they stand, know that goals are being met, and that they’re doing a good job.
“It’s always set up a positive culture of trust between everyone,” Mullin explains.
There’s no stronger pool of future leadership talent than those emerging from a successful military career.
“It’s just that ‘never quit’ attitude,” Mullin enthuses. “We start with the customer and work backwards, and we have concrete goals. As long as you really understand those two things, just show up each day and that’s what’s going to make you successful here.”
To expand on that, Mullin says the essence of leadership boils down to being able to tell other people what to do and have they trust you and believe in you enough that they want to do it.
“You know, some people have that natural ability, but others learn it through time in the military or just experience uh that they develop over time,” he reminds us. “If you are transitioning from the military, don’t be afraid to network, don’t be afraid to reach out. Some vets underestimate their skills, and how valuable they are to communities.”
“Especially that leadership skill,” he continues. “Some things just can’t be taught overnight, and that’s especially true when you get into management leadership.”
With that, Mullin returns to his dreams of flying, and of the future tech that he’s helping realize in the modern world every day at Amazon Prime Air.