I originally applied for a Research Scientist position in Berlin. Within a week I received a response from the recruitment team which followed by 2 technical phone interviews that I completed within the next 4 weeks or so. The technical interviews went well and I was invited for an offsite "onsite". Since the recruiting team were all based in the US, the "onsite" had to be conducted remotely.
They asked me to wait before they can actually work out the time and date of the onsite. After about 6 weeks of waiting (it was actually all happening over Christmas, hence the extended waiting period) the recruitment team returned to me and said that the position was cancelled.
About 3-4 weeks later the same recruiter reached out to me and asked me if I'd consider a Data Scientist (Fraud Prevention Team at AWS) role in Berlin, I said yes. Then I spoke with a different recruiter on the phone who took me through the rest of the process from here: just one more phone interview and then the onsite (not a remote one this time). About 2 weeks after that, I passed another technical phone interview and about a month later I was invited to attend an onsite interview. Again, the entire team was based on the US so my onsite was scheduled to go from 1pm to 7pm.
I was initially preparing myself for a rough recruitment process, but in the end, I thought that the recruitment process wasn't that difficult. The most challenging part was during one of the phone interviews when I was asked a tricky coding question and I thought I screwed it up, but they still wanted to go ahead with my application. As for the onsite itself, I was very well prepared and I was extremely happy with my own performance. However, a week later I received a call from the recruiter who said that they decided not to hire me. She also said that unfortunately they cannot give me any feedback as it's against their policy, but they did encourage me to apply for other roles with Amazon.
If you are interviewing with Amazon, here is what I would recommend:
- Spend some quality time on LeetCode or HackerRank as it will definitely help you
- Do not underestimate the behavioural questions and you will be asked a whole tone of these. To get ready for these questions don't just read prepare examples from your career that relate to Amazon Leadership Principles, but actually look for questions based on these principles. For example, the "Are Right, A Lot" principle might translate into a question such as "tell me about a time when you've made a mistake at work and what did you learn from it?"
