I applied online. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in Jan 2014
Interview
Applied Online. 3 weeks later was contacted by Amazon H/R. After one 30 minute phone screen by H/R (successful) another 2 week delay ensued to set a 30 minute phone interview with the hiring manager. Hiring manager was first described as a 'he' but then the interviewer was actually a she. She called exactly at the bottom of the hour and there was ZERO introductory questions or personality questions. Nothing friendly. No opportunity whatsoever for personal banter. She launched into question 1, gave very little reaction then to Q2, Q3, Q4, Q5, Q6, Q7 most of which had nothing to do with my experience but had much to do with Amazon's existing processes. How you are supposed to know those as an outsider I have no idea. Anyways,she gave no verbal reaction as to the applicability of my answers, went deep dive on several of my answers into Amazon's apparently legendary data gathering and data parsing algorithms. She sounded more impressed with Amazon's processes than frankly I was. She left time for me to ask exactly 1 question of her (which I had prepared ahead of time) and she stopped the interview at precisely the top of the hour. Not a second over. Like a drill sergeant. Had no idea how I did and Amazon then played like a girlfriend that broke up with you and lost your number, email address etc. I have 20 years in tech. and they would not be mature enough to say - sorry you didn't advance to the next stage or we went with other candidates. Nothing. This was VERY discourteous and no the way to handle rejected candidates. Wastes the candidates time when you call/email back 3 or 4 times spaced 3 days apart. The process left a bad impression of me personally on Amazon. #notimpressed
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Some internal jargon about how would you rank vendors based on the reams of data collected on customer orders. Gave her a good answer on this one but she wanted more and more and more. Then no reaction - onto next Q.
Interview process is challenging but expected as everything you need to know is available online. They will schedule you with 4 employees from the team or organization you will work with and 1 completely separated from your organization as a "bar raiser". No need to work to impress one specific person, know 12-14 differentiated STAR formatted stories by memory.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Tell me about a time you had to sacrifice short-term gain for long-term success. What did you do? What was the outcome?
3 loops of 45 min interviews with people from different teams I would work together with if I get hired, Standard behavioral questions, 3 to 4 per interview and a few follow-up questions to each answers, follow-up styles differ by the interviewer
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Tell me about a time you created a metric to identify a need for change.
Not great. Very first interview had no proper introduction to the role and was not with HR, interviewee went straight into a case study within 5 minutes. Didn't seem interested in my actual work background.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
What is one difficult thing you've experienced and overcome?