I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon (Singapur) in Jan 2020
Interview
I have been applying for a couple of positions at Amazon for like 1 or 2 years.
Only last month then, a recruiter from Amazon contacted me because she found my resume on their database and told me that I may be suitable for a few positions so I chose for Technical Program Manager position. We spoke on the phone like initial phone screen and after the call, she said she will schedule for the first round of interview.
First interview was phone interview with another TPM in the same team via Amazon Chime. Interview was scheduled at 10 am but interviewer was late for 30 mins and we only started at 10:30 am. Although interviewer was late, he was a nice person, explained to me that he was stuck on another meeting and we conducted the interview for 1 hour from 10:30 to 11:30. First round interview questions were more towards technical questions rather than program or project management questions. Technical questions are average difficulty if you know your stuff.
After the first round, I emailed to the recruiter for status and recruiter replied to me that she received good feedback from first interviewer and I can proceed to 2nd round.
The 2nd round was also via Amazon Chime with one of data center managers. Although the 2nd interviewer was on time for interview, he seemed to be busy during the call. There were long pauses during the call and I had to ask him whether he has any questions for me. There was also a time that interviewer mentioned he needed to answer a phone and muted, we resumed the interview afterwards. Second round interview questions were more on behavioural questions like "Tell me about challenging projects" or "Tell me about projects that I failed". So I talked about some of my difficult projects, either deadline was too tight or technical requirements were not defined, resources not allocated, etc. Then interviewer asked me again why was the project challenging. I had to explain the reasons again. Probably interviewer didn't catch my explanation or the way I answer behavioural questions was not right because interviewer was not convinced why the projects could not be delivered smoothly. If all project requirements were clear and everything was planned accordingly, I would not mention in the first place that that was challenging project.
Anyway, after interview, I emailed to recruiter for the status. As expected, the next day, I received reply that they won't be proceeding.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Tell me about challenging projects you experience in the past
I applied online. The process took 5 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon (Tel Aviv) in Feb 2020
Interview
The interview process was long and managed badly,
It included 2 phone interviews and home assignment and later a on site interview which included 4 face to face interviews+1 interview by Amazon chime with an interviewer from Seattle.
The phone interviews were mostly about "Amazon 14 leadership principles"
1. Describe a failure
2. Describe a situation where you had to do data driven decision
3. Select a favorite app and improve it
The onsite interviews where both behavioral and technical but the majority is about "Amazon 14 leadership principles".
The coordination of the phone interviews took a lot of time and the entire HR process (coordination of the onsite and the interviewers were late) was poor and felt very amateurish.
Some of the interviewers were people with no inter personal capabilities- "Describe a situation?"
The home assignment was to write 2 pages about one of the topics
1. Describe a judgement call
or
2. Describe invention of you
Nobody asked about the home assignment nor gave a feedback.
After a week I received a decline generic email with no explanation.
I applied online. The process took 3 months. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in Nov 2019
Interview
This was on the Amazon Web Services team, within one of the sub-groups of AWS. Had a couple of phone screens, although in retrospect they were very similar to the onsite interviews but on a shorter time scale, after which I was flown to Seattle for a one day onsite. Questions very heavily based on the STAR interview format. Annoying behavioral type of questions. They were just relentless with the questions and it was a stressful day. I don't see how this type of interview yields the best candidates for hiring. Also, they seemed not to care about my technical skills during the phone screens but during the interviews that seemed to be come up a few times. Wish they would have been more clear on what they expect for technical abilities before flying me out as I'm not super technical, at least compared to a developer.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Provide an example of a time where you invented something (could be a software, program, etc...), explain what you did, and what impact it had.