I applied through college or university. The process took 1 week. I interviewed at Amazon in Oct 2014
Interview
The hiring process consists of three parts,I made it to round one and didn't get an invite to round two--
1) First thing I had to do was complete a two part online test (1st part is like a very simple IQ test, 2nd part is a personality test to probably see if you match with their 14 leadership principles). After this, you're either accepted or rejected for a first round interview.
2) First round interview--two 30 minute interviews. The personalities of the interviewers were very different, the first was very low key, the second was very high energy. Phone interviews were conducted on the same day about two hours apart. The interviews weren't really either behavioral or case-based which really threw me off-- they were very entrepreneurial, problem recognition/solving focused. Be able to talk to Amazon as a company, what you think some of it's problems are, and new product suggestions. Expect interviewers to "dive deep" and get into why you're answering questions the way you are.
As a side note-- I had other friends interview for other positions (program manager, logisitics) and their questions/focus were very different than mine. Good luck and hopefully you have a better chance than I did.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
First interview questions-
1. What can Amazon do to improve the user's experience? How can we do this? Why do you think people like ____?
2. What is your favorite piece of technology. How would you improve it? What would you do to make these improvements?
3. What's the biggest problem you've solved?
Second interview questions-
1) What is it about Amazon that interests you, what area/product do you want to work in?
2) Amazon, in partnership with Chase, offers a credit card. We use to have a high acceptance rate but the 2008 crisis caused it to drop. How can we raise this rate back up?
3) How is Amazon's growth constrained? How do you think we should solve this?
4) What are some reasons a person might want to buy something from a corner store instead of buying something through Amazon? Pick one reason and solve it.
5) Tell me about a time you disagreed with a peer, how was it resolved?
I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon (Irvine, CA) in Sep 2014
Interview
Phone interview. The guy interviewing me was talking to me on speaker, "multi tasking" I could not hear him well and he seemed upset with me that I could not hear him. My former VP is a VP at Amazon and 3 of my former co-workers are working at Amazon, I was very excited to have the opportunity. Disappointed that Amazon lets the employee's act so arrogant and disrespectful. I was well prepared for an interview that gave me no chance. Hopefully most people will not encounter this.
I applied through an employee referral. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at Amazon in Dec 2012
Interview
HR Does a great job staying in touch. Super rigorous interviewing - all STAR Principle. 2 Phone Screens and then 8 1:1...plus the Bar Raiser (super Jedi interviewer who makes sure candidate can do the job better than half of the people currently employed at that position). The process was probably the best thing about Amazon. The work environment and leadership was absolutely deplorable.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Tell me about a time when the data did not match the situation in reality?