What is a bar raiser interview? Amazon's model and how other teams adapt it

A bar raiser interview is an interview in a hiring loop run by a specially trained interviewer from outside the hiring team, whose job is to keep the hiring standard high and consistent rather than to fill this particular seat. The term comes from Amazon, which says it started the program in 1999 and that every person hired should be better than 50 percent of the people currently in similar roles (Amazon). Amazon's Bar Raisers are nominated, train for three months to a year, lead the debrief, and make the final hiring decision together with the hiring manager.

This page explains how Amazon describes the role, what happens in the interview and the debrief, the veto question, and how a smaller team can borrow the idea without copying all of it. Facts about Amazon come from Amazon's own pages, linked and dated; we found no published study measuring the effect of bar raiser programs as such.

What is a bar raiser?

Amazon's own descriptions give the core of the role:

• An objective third party. A Bar Raiser is brought into a hiring loop from outside the team. Amazon says Bar Raisers typically hold positions outside the business the candidate is interviewing for, so they see strengths and gaps the team might miss (Amazon).
• A steward of the standard. Amazon calls the role a steward of its 16 Leadership Principles, the competencies its interviews assess.
• The name. Amazon says the program was first called the Barkeeper Program, and was renamed because the point is raising the standard with each hire, not keeping it.
• Volunteers. In a 2019 article, Amazon said it had more than 3,600 Bar Raisers, drawn from roles across the company, who do it in addition to their own jobs (Amazon, October 2019).

What does a bar raiser do?

Amazon lists three groups of responsibilities for a certified Bar Raiser:

Before the loop, Amazon says Bar Raisers help hiring managers prepare: which Leadership Principles matter most for the role, which questions to ask, and how to write feedback. After it, they facilitate the debrief so the conversation stays on evidence and every interviewer is heard, which is the same job a debrief facilitator does in any structured process (see what is a hiring debrief).

What happens in a bar raiser interview?

For the candidate, it looks like any other interview in the loop. Amazon says candidates meet two to seven employees in the loop, and the whole process usually takes about three to six weeks, longer for senior roles (Amazon, February 2025). Its interview guide describes the interviews as behavioral and recommends answering with the STAR method, using specific, measurable examples tied to the Leadership Principles (Amazon, April 2025).

What differs is the interviewer's stake. The Bar Raiser will not manage or work beside the person, so their question is whether this hire is good for the company over the long run, not whether it gets an urgent seat filled. That distance is the whole design.

Does a bar raiser have veto power?

This is the most repeated claim about bar raisers, and Amazon's own careers and news pages do not make it. They say the Bar Raiser makes the final hiring decision with the hiring manager, and that interviewers give their input to the Bar Raiser and hiring manager, who decide. Descriptions of a formal veto come from outside accounts, not from those pages.

If you build your own version, decide the authority on purpose and write it down. Three workable options:

1. Advisor: the reviewer's score counts like any other, and they facilitate the debrief.
2. Joint decision: the hire needs both the hiring manager and the reviewer, which is closest to Amazon's description.
3. Escalation: the reviewer cannot block a hire but can require a written justification, or send the decision to a more senior leader.

An undefined veto is the option to avoid: it turns into one person's taste deciding hires, which is exactly the problem the role exists to prevent.

How does someone become a bar raiser at Amazon?

From Amazon's description of the program:

• Bar Raisers are nominated by their manager, peers or other Bar Raisers.
• They train on the Leadership Principles, including shadowing experienced Bar Raisers for multiple interview cycles over several months.
• Training is voluntary, on top of their job, and takes three months to a year. Amazon's program manager said one person may graduate after fewer than a dozen interviews and another after 40 or more.

The shadowing step is the part most worth copying, whatever you call the role. How to run it is in interviewer shadowing.

What questions does a bar raiser ask in the debrief?

Amazon's article quotes a Bar Raiser whose favorite debrief questions ask what the company would miss by not hiring the person and what makes the team want to work with them. Questions like these push the room from impressions to reasons. A reviewer in any company can use a short set like this:

REVIEWER'S DEBRIEF QUESTIONS
- Which competency is that score about, and what did the candidate say?
- What evidence would have moved your score up or down a point?
- Is this person better than about half of the people doing the job now?
  What tells us that?
- What would we lose by not hiring them, and what risk do we take on if we do?
- Would we make this hire if the seat had been open for one week, not three months?
- Did anyone change their view after reading someone else's feedback?

The last question matters because a reviewer's value depends on independent evidence reaching the room; see independent interview feedback before the debrief.

What goes wrong when teams copy the bar raiser idea?

• Seniority instead of training. Making the most senior person in the building the reviewer recreates the loudest-voice problem the role was meant to solve.
• A reviewer with no slot in the loop, who reads the feedback and overrules the panel without having met the candidate.
• A bottleneck. Two reviewers for forty open roles means every loop waits for their calendars.
• A private standard. If the reviewer's bar is not written into the scorecard, candidates are judged on criteria nobody else can see.

How is a bar raiser different from other roles in a loop?

A committee works from paper, so its quality depends on the packet; see the hiring committee packet template. For the rest of the cast, see interview panel roles and responsibilities.

Should your company use bar raisers?

It helps most when:

• Several teams hire into similar roles and their standards have drifted apart.
• Hiring managers are under pressure to fill seats quickly.
• Debriefs tend to follow the most senior voice in the room.

It costs more than it returns when:

• You hire a few people a year and one hiring manager sees every candidate anyway.
• You have too few trained reviewers, so every loop waits for the same two people.
• The scorecard and decision rule are vague. A reviewer cannot hold a standard nobody wrote down.

The research that supports the idea is about its ingredients rather than the program: independent ratings, standardized questions and anchors, and combining scores by a rule (Conway, Jako and Goodman, 1995). A bar raiser is one way to make sure those happen on every loop.

How can a smaller team adapt the idea?

1. Pick three to five reviewers who interview well and sit outside the teams they will review.
2. Train them on your scorecard, with at least one calibration session and a few shadowed loops.
3. Give them one slot in the loop, assessing a competency that matters across teams, so the role adds evidence without adding a round.
4. Make them the debrief facilitator: scorecards in before the meeting, evidence before opinions, the agreed hire or no-hire rule applied.
5. Write down their authority using one of the three options above.
6. Rotate and review. Check every quarter whether loops with a reviewer took longer to decide, and whether reviewers agree with each other on sample answers.