Senior manager Interview Questions
33K
Senior Manager interview questions shared by candidates
Why Amazon?
42 Answers↳
Amazon has made an impact to the world by changing the way we do things- the way we shop, the way we read, accelerated pace in machine learning etc. I have seen Amazon consistently listed as one of the top places to work with one of the leadership principles Hire& Develop people, I would love to join your innovative team, continue to create great work, and grow within the company by learning new skills. Less
↳
It's no surprise that Amazon is the world's leading company in existence, with the highest profile & reputation bar none. I have always dreamt of being in a prestigious company as Amazon, as I know I have alot of to give in looking for thee most efficient ways to resolve any types of problems. I have extensive experience in the Customer care industry, & I can truly say that my life's passion is ensuring I can make people happy with the service I will provide. Less
↳
“I really believe the vision that making Amazon the Earth’s most customer-centric company more than anyone and I wanted to be a part of it on it’s pursuit which is the reason and motivation driving me to join Amazon.” Less

What would you do if you are given 100,000 dollars?
17 Answers↳
I'll give this money to some organisations
↳
I'll give this money to my father because he is currently jobless
↳
i will donate these money for hospital in my village because there is one hospital with no facilities for 8 to 10 thousand people Less

"How many people born in 2013 were called Gary? Tell us how you arrive at your answer"
16 Answers↳
None of them. They didn't have names yet when they were born.
↳
Sorry, I cannot work out how that question is relevant to me or the role. What would you like to know about me? Less
↳
One too many

The manager of component 'A' says his functionality is more important than that of component 'B.' The manager of component 'B' says his is more important than that of component 'A.' You can only implement one A or B, but not both - which do you choose to implement.
14 Answers↳
The key question to ask is definition of "IMPORTANT". Is it important to the managers (ego equation), important to the end consumer or important for Amazon. The first one needs to be thrown out immediately and the others must be quantified based on achievability, impact on end user and ROI. Less
↳
I would say whichever is more valuable to customer & gives competitive advantage to Amazon. Less
↳
In addition to the above suggestions, I would look at cost and time to market and then score both options. Then define value metrics. The cheapest and most valuable either as a technology sustainer or for customer wins. Given that it's Amazon, customer value will hold up the highest as one of their corporate culture virtues. Less

What do you know about American Express & why do you want to work here?
9 Answers↳
American Express is the world's premier service company, and the largest credit card issuer by purchase volume. It is also an equal opportunity employer, made up of people from many diverse backgrounds, lifestyles and location Less
↳
I can move to there if I get job offer, To share my experience with you.
↳
American Express company also know as amex is American multinational company started in 1850 and headquarter in new your and company dealing with charge card , credit cards and traveler's cheque. Company has more than 55000 employees and Stephen j. Squeri is the CEO of the company. Less

Credit card insurance case: calculate break-even claim rate where response rate = 2%, fee charged = 1% of monthly balance, and average balance = $1,000 per month.
8 Answers↳
Don't think there's enough info here to solve. Response rate is 2%, but you need to know how much the marketing costs to be able to determine the breakeven. Less
↳
I think the break even claim rate for this insurance scheme would be 1%. (Keeping all other non-mentioned costs aside) Let's assume 100 customers are contacted: 2% response rate = 2 people buy insurance. Revenue: 2 * (1% of 1000) = $20 At break even, cost would also be $20. Let the claim rate be x% (Note: this will be a percentage of the people who have bought the insurance, i.e. x% of 2% of 100) Insurance pay-out = $1000 per claim Cost: 1000 * x% of 2 = 1000 * x/100 * 2 = 20x Now, revenue = cost at break even, hence: $20 = 20x x = 1 So the B/E claim rate would be 1%. Less
↳
I am assuming that the marketing cost is $0.5 per mail. So, if 10000 people are sent mail, 2% respond i.e. 200 people revenue - fee charged * balance * no of people * 12(for a year) i.e. 1% * 1000 * 200 * 12 = 24000 cost- 0.5*10000 = 5000 for mailers lets say claim rate is c% so, c% * 1000 * 200 i.e. 2000c (claims are assumed yearly so no need to multiply by 12) so total cost = 5000 + 2000c in case of break even, revenue will be equal to cost. there for 5000 + 2000c = 24000 i.e. c = 9.5 or break even claim rate = 9.5% Less

All linked to the Amazon leadership principles.
7 Answers↳
Warning..... Above is just an ad, the link takes you to his ebook (apparently reveals all the secrets and answers to get through the amazon interview process) which will cost you $80+ by the way and apparently has almost 100 reviews at 5 stars! Less
↳
Best services&good quality products
↳
Use real life experiences, leveragin the STAR technique to respond.

What do you think of the team?
6 Answers↳
team is a group of people with different ideas working on a common goal
↳
the team is a group of people who help each other to make the company success
↳
Working a project, a functional team is the one major key to success.

How would I design the elevators for a new 40 story office building that had an average of 100 people per floor to most efficiently fill and empty the building given a standard 9-5 workday and traffic conditions in my city? The answer needed to be completely detailed, including expected passengers per car, time per stop, average floors stops per trip at various hours, etc.
7 Answers↳
1) The first advice that I've read is to ask some questions before you start answering. It will show that you are strategic & don't jump to random assumptions. So I will probably ask questions like: Is the efficiency goal focused only at the start & end of day & not in between (i.e. lunch time, breaks)? How many elevators are there? What is the capacity of each elevator? 2) Assuming that everything is average, i.e. 6 elevators, 15 people per elevator, and focus only on start and end date, then the sample data should follow a normal distribution. 730-8 - 2% 8-830 - 14% 830-9 - 34% 9-930 - 34% 930-10 - 14% 10-1030 - 2% 3) I will break this down & solve the worst case scenario first. This means, 34 people x 40 floors = 1360 people to be transported by 6 elevator x 15 = total 90 capacity during 830-9 or 9-930 am. 4) Focusing on this more manageable problem, 1360 / 90 means each elevator will make 15 full cycles (lobby to highest floor and back) 5) Since we want to minimize the cycle time for each elevator, we assign one elevator per subset of 40/6 consecutive floors. This should address the issue on minimizing time per stop. 6) That means, the final design should be a load balancing of the elevators by minimizing the travel time --- Elevator A - 1st to 7th floor, B - 8th to 14th floor, and so forth. Do you guys see anything wrong with this line of thinking? Less
↳
The idea is to "learn" from user behavior. Start with a blank slate where the elevators assume that all floors, except the first floor, have the same probability at all times. Then, based on user behavior, alter the probabilities. If the elevators can talk with the users' phones, via bluetooth, and identify to which floor this user goes, when he/she comes to and leaves work, how often does this person take the elevator to go to other floors or out on lunch, then improve the efficiency based on the aspects learnt. Less
↳
A simple algorithm would be to note that there will be more people during the morning going up and slowly taper this down as the day progresses. For example, during the noon-afternoon period, the frequency and number of people going up or down would be almost the same. So have a priority for the ground floor during the morning hours. Move the elevators as soon as possible to the higher floors. Mandate that people get in regardless of whether the elevator is going up or down, once the elevator reaches the highest floor, it would reverse and go non-stop to the bottom floor. Increase the priority for people for the floors that have the buttons pressed as time passes. Less

What is the best way to sort a terabyte of array of data, when you have limited RAM (500k), and each array element has a couple of items of data, at about 1-10k each.
6 Answers↳
External merge sort. First load the data chunk by chunk, sort it in-memory (by quicksort for example) and write it back in chunks. After this, use merge sort on the chunks. This is how most databases do sorting. Less
↳
How is this relevant to a product manager role? This is an engineering problem
↳
External merge sort is the answer