The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in May 2011
Interview
They asked me a few questions about what I had done, and I asked about the work life balance. There was none, they work 60-80 hours a week every week. He seemed to love it there, but there was no way they would pay me the rate I was making working 40 hours, so it was pretty obvious it wasn't going to work. It doesn't seem like a good business model to me to work your employees to death, but it seems to be working for them. Personally, I don't even want to buy anything from them knowing how they treat their employees.
I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon in Apr 2011
Interview
Initial communication handled well. Had several phone interviews. On site was weird - thought I would be forced to drink the Kool-Aid. Found attitude to be very offputting. Employees acted as if Amazon was God's gift to civilization. I'm ex-military, but I found the atmosphere at Amazon to be very rigid and appeared to be allow for little, if any, independent thought.
The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in Feb 2011
Interview
I was contacted by a company recruiter to set up a phone interview with the hiring manager. I thought this was a little atypical as HR usually likes to speak with a candidate first to give them a high level overview of the company and what position they are contacting you about.
When the hiring manager called me, late as a matter of fact, he barely introduced himself, gave no preamble about what the job entailed, and just launched into his questions.
He only asked 2 questions, and then his part of the interview was over. At that point, I finally got the chance to ask a couple of questions about the job and the company. Once it was revealed that the job was going to take between 60-80 hours a week of my time, and that was once the team was fully staffed (at interview time they were only about 50% staffed), I was no longer interested.
The recruiter did follow up the next day to let me know that I would not be continuing on in the process. I had basically figured that out as soon as the interviewer stopped his questioning at 2.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
You've been tasked with preparing a business case about whether to continue offering Amazon Prime. What elements would you use to make your case?