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Amazon Interview Guide

Amazon Interview Process: Everything you Need to Know

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Amazon Interview Process

Amazon is a renowned and one of the largest companies in the world. This MNC is one of the most valuable brands, and everyone aspires to work with one of the leading software companies, Amazon. Freshers and Professionals want to get hired in this MNC, but the interview process is not that easy to crack. So for candidates looking forward to joining Amazon here, we have brought up a complete Amazon Interview Preparation Guide with a-to-z information of the Hiring Process.

How to apply at Amazon?

Candidates can directly apply by visiting the Amazon Careers Page. Professionals can also ask your friend working at Amazon to refer you for the job openings. Amazon also offers the opportunity of an internship or full-time job to students and freshly Graduated. Professionals who have relevant experience can apply to Fulfillment Center hiring, where you find numerous openings in different departments and categories.

With the recent changes around the world, Amazon keeps its hiring process ongoing, and to provide safe employment, it has introduced remote opportunities in which a candidate can virtually join the company by working from home.

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Amazon Recruitment Process:

After scrutinizing resumes, you have to appear in multiple rounds of Tests and Interviews if your resume is shortlisted. Amazon is strongly selective in hiring a potential candidate, and for that, it takes different rounds of Assessments, Interviews, and Technical Interviews to shortlist a candidate. Amazon Interview Process is different from role to role. It is not compulsory that all the rounds will be conducted for all the positions, but multiple rounds will be conducted per profile requirement.

Amazon Assessments:

To hire the best candidate, Amazon uses online assessments to measure key characteristics required in a role. Depending on the job role, you will be assessed to complete and submit within 5 days. Once you finish the first assessment, then you’ll be given the second. The type and number of assessments depend on the role you applied, and in some cases, the assessment needed to be completed in a specific timeframe. Some assessments are discussed below.

Coding Assessment: A tech professional will be given 20 minutes to complete 7 questions asked on Java, C++, C languages. It is one of the easiest assessments with minor bugs which you have to rectify. In this, you must keep an eye on the time and finish it within the timeframe.

Work Style Assessment: These assessments focus on Amazon culture and Leadership Principles and take about 10-20 minutes to complete. Here you have to choose a statement that represents your work style from multiple options. Other than that, coding questions are added in this assessment for the technical professionals.

Work Sample Simulation: In this assessment, you have to complete virtual tasks related to a job profile you have applied for and take about 20 minutes - one hour to complete. In this candidate’s Leadership Principles, problem-solving, prioritization, and interpersonal abilities are checked. As per the job role, you will be asked to interpret data, answer a customer question, resolve an issue, multitask, or find the correct information from multiple sources.

Tips to ace Amazon Online Assessments:

  • For Technical profiles, candidates have to prepare for the online assessment, and for all other profiles, no preparation is required. Just be yourself and do your best.
  • Don’t overthink in Work Style Assessment questions or not spend too much time on any one question. Just be yourself.
  • Before beginning the assessment, read the instructions carefully since things like timing, deadlines, and assessment types can vary depending on the team.

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Amazon Phone interview:

After clearing the assessment, the candidate will be called by Interviewer. In this round, behavioral-based questions are asked from the candidate, covering past situations or challenges you’ve faced and how you handled them, using Leadership Principles to guide the discussion. Other than that, the Interviewer will ask the coding question from candidates appearing for technical roles. Keep your answers well-structured and provide examples using data and stats wherever possible. Here are some of the questions for reference, which will give you an idea about the Amazon Telephonic Interview questions.

Amazon Phone Interview Questions:

  • Tell us about a problem you faced that had several possible solutions. Explain the situation and your course of action? What was the result you get?
  • When did you take a risk, which turns into a mistake or failure? How did you respond, what is your approach, and how did you grow from that experience?
  • Describe a project that you lead.
  • If you are a team leader, how will you motivate individuals or promote collaboration regarding a specific project?
  • How will you evaluate data to develop a strategy?

Amazon Technical Interviews:

It is an On-site Interview, but due to the current situation, the hiring process is gone virtually. In this section, multiple rounds will be conducted to know more and more about the professional until the hiring team is satisfied with the candidate’s technical knowledge. Generally, it takes 2-3 rounds of Amazon Technical Interview to understand the subject/skill. They will also focus on Amazon Leadership Principles and Behavioral qualities in every round, which is well defined below.

Programming Languages, Data structures, Coding, Databases, operating system, the Internet, General machine learning, and artificial intelligence are general topics asked in Amazon Technical Interview. Apart from that, the details written in your CV are also given priority. Always try to answer as you provide a solution to the customer and keep the customer on top of mind. Here we have given the list of topics asked in the Interview.

Technical topics

  • Programming language
  • Data structures
  • Algorithms
  • Coding
  • Object-oriented design
  • Databases
  • Distributed computing
  • Operating systems
  • Internet topics
  • General machine learning and artificial intelligence

For more detailed preparation, you can check the complete topics from the given link, and also, there are videos provided that help you prepare for Amazon Technical Interview.

Learn More Interview Questions Here:

The Role of Bar Raiser interviewers in the Amazon Loop Interview Process:

The On-site interviews are called “The Loop” Interview Process in Amazon. The number of interviewers in the panel is depended on the job role, but you can expect to meet with four to eight people in a single panel. A Bar Raiser is a skilled interviewer in the interviewing panel who is a neutral person and decides to hire a candidate.

The “bar” is an imaginary line that signifies the 50th percentile of all Amazonians working in that role, so “raise the bar” means hiring a person who’s better than 50% of the professionals working at Amazon on that level. A Bar Raiser’s primary purpose is to assure that the hiring committee mainly focuses on maintaining and improving this bar. It has three primary responsibilities:

  • Evaluate candidate’s performance for the specific role and long-term success at Amazon
  • Assurance of open, accurate, and fair assessment of the candidate by each member of the panel.
  • Handling responsibility of helping hiring managers prepare for interviews, Leadership Principles, and the competencies required for that specific job role, and provide written feedback.

All the panel members seem similar as a Bar Raiser not stand out of the hiring committee. So, if you want to detect the Bar Raiser, we will tell you that he/she will focus on Leadership principles and behavioral activities. In Amazon, Bar Raiser will be given Veto Power as he/she has the power to reject a person even the hiring Manager has selected the candidate, and no one can change his/her decision.

Ace Amazon interview with Leadership principles and STAR method

Leadership Principles and STAR method are essential behavioral qualities on which the Amazon Hiring process depends. In every round, Amazon, these qualities will be judged by the hiring committee. Apart from knowledge, these are the core values for regular, technical, and all other profiles on which candidates will be evaluated throughout the process. So let’s see what the STAR Method and Leading Principles of Amazon are:

STAR Method: It is a structured manner of answering a behavioral-based interview question. The STAR stands for situation, task, action, and result. So let’s understand the meaning of it.

Situation: Provide a situation and give enough detail as interviewers understand the complexities of the situation. It can be related to a previous job, school project, any activity, or relevant event from your life.

Task: What is the main goal you were working for in the above situation?

Action: Explain the necessary actions you took in handling the situation with appropriate information and focusing on yourself. Describe the specific measures, contributions, and different aspects related to the situation. Try to use the word “I” and not “we” while explaining.

Result: Explain the outcome of your actions and do take credit for your behavior. Provide the proper conclusion like what happened and how did everything got settled? What did this situation teach you? If you can give metrics or data, that will be more approachable.

Leadership Principles:

It is an integral part of Amazon Culture, and the Leadership Principles are user every day by each Amazonian. Whether they are discussing ideas or solving a problem, they follow these Leadership Principles. This is the reason why during the hiring process, the candidate is evaluated on Amazon Leadership Principles. So let’s go through the principles followed by Amazon.

Customer Obsession: The mindset of the Leaders is, to begin with, the customer and then work backward. They work hard to earn and maintain customer trust. Although leaders pay attention to competitors, they obsess over customers.

Ownership: Leaders are the owners. Their thought process works in the long term and doesn’t sacrifice long-term value for short-term results. They are not limited to their team and act on behalf of the entire company.

Invent and Simplify: Leaders inspire their team to innovate and invent and always find ways to simplify. They are always in search of new ideas from everywhere.

Leaders are right a lot: They leaders must have strong judgment and good instincts.

Learn and Be Curious: Leaders are constantly learning and keep on improving themselves. They explore new possibilities to grow.

Hire and Develop the Best: Leaders increase the performance bar with each hiring and promotion. They search for exceptional talent and develop them to get the best for the organization. They work on the process of Leaders develop leaders and very serious in performing their roles.

Insist on the Highest Standards: Leaders have high standards as they continually raise the bar and drive their teams to deliver excellent results.

Think Big: Leaders create and communicate in a straightforward and bold direction that inspires results. Their out-of-the-box thinking serves the best to customers.

Frugality: Achieve more with less. Leaders have to be resourceful, self-sufficient, and inventive.

Earn Trust: Leaders must have attained the habit of listening attentively, speak candidly, and treat everyone respectfully. They fixed a benchmark for themselves and their teams against the best.

Dive Deep: Leaders operate at all levels; they stay interconnected, audit frequently, and measure when metrics and anecdotes differ.

Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit: Leaders respectfully take stand and challenge decisions when they disagree. Leaders have an opinion and are persistent with that, and they commit that wholly.

Deliver Results: Leaders calculate the key inputs and deliver the result in decent quality and timely fashion.

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Amazon interview Experience

Here we have brought the Amazon Interview Experiences of candidates who had given the Amazon Interviews and make it to the last round to gets shortlisted.

Amazon Developer Interview Experience:

I, Gaetano Piazzolla, applied for the Amazon AWS job role for Dublin (Ireland). After few days, I’ve received an email in which they wanted me to take a short programming challenge. Questions cover Algorithm, data structures, time, and space complexity. I have to complete three questions within 125 minutes. After shortlisting, I got an email about phone screening. During the telephonic round, I was asked about API development: retro-compatibility issues, integration with external systems, deployment, unit testing, etc.

At the on-site interview, I had a 5-hours interview divided into 1-hour segments. The first segment is the System design interview in which SQL — vs. NO SQL systems, scalability, and behavioral questions was asked. Another is the Amazon principle interview, in which the interviewer analyzed my experience, and different situations were given. The third segment is Java and API design Interview, which is easy for me and provided almost every answer related to these topics, followed by another round of Algorithm interviews which is the hardest. At last, again, I attended the Amazon principle interview, in which I was given scenarios to resolve. Follow the link to get the detailed experience to know more.

Amazon Software Engineer Interview Experience:

Anurag Pandey, a 2020 engineer graduate, had applied for a job through a reference from a friend. After 2-3 months, a recruiter reached me with a coding test link active for a week. There were different online assessments of coding, Work Style Assessment, Work Sample Simulation to be done within 2 hours. Then I called for a telephonic interview round, and only one question is asked “I had to explain my approach to her and code along the way and dry run the code as well,” which takes about 30-40 minutes.

After that, I attended On-site Interviews, and I had two interviews scheduled at morning and noon shifts. In the First Round, I was asked two coding questions and three behavioral questions. The coding questions are from string and data structure topics, whereas behavioral questions are tough. The second interview is more complex than the first one in which I was asked about time complexity & pseudo code. I was asked to attend an interview the next day as well, in which I was asked about OOP concepts and design patterns than DS/ALGO & DBMS.

At last, there is a Bar Raiser Round which started with behavioral questions for around 30 minutes. Then a casual conversation about my work and background, and finally, I asked to validate an equation that explained and coded it. Professionals can read the complete interview by following the link.

What makes Amazon Differ from Google? (or other companies Hiring Process)

Amazon and Google are the top companies that have high-tech employers at present. But their hiring processes are not similar and have many differences. Both the companies have high hiring bars, but their culture and hiring practices are very different. Amazon hires experienced professionals, so the candidates start contributing from day one, whereas Google does not focus on work experience but exceptional General Cognitive qualities which means you can think critically and solve big problems.

Amazon Leadership Principles looks at the abundance in a candidate as they believe in You’re on your own, and you need to make things happen. In contrast, Google assesses a candidate’s “googleyness,” which judges a candidate’s intellectual humility, conscientiousness, a track record of having done exciting things, fun, etc. Amazon’s “Bar Raiser” is a unique part of unbiased and fair hiring, and he/she has veto power to reject a candidate, whereas Google’s hiring decision depends on the hiring committee and then approval from VP. Amazon usually finalizes the hiring decision within a week of a candidate’s onsite interview, whereas Google takes many weeks or nearly a month to finalize a candidature.

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