Amazon Program Manager interview questions

Applied online and received an automated email a few days later saying the company was interested in an interview and requested dates and times for interviews. When I completed that and many days passed with no follow-up, I reached out to the name of the recruiter #1 on the automated email. She responded quickly and said she saw where I had completed the info as requested but the “system” didn’t pick it up. So she sent me on to a recruiter #2 to manually set up the interview with someone on the team. Day of the interview and I was stood up. Got a bunch of apologizes that there were communication breakdowns. Double booking. All that mess. Delayed the interview by another week, but it gets rebooked by recruiter #2. Never hear from recruiter #1 again. Then a third person, recruiter #3, sends me an email out of the blue saying I need a pre-interview prep. Requests a call ASAP. So we chat and it’s basically telling me it’s all about the 14 leadership principles and telling good stories, and that I would also need to do a written test as well. Was told the process moves quickly with no more than 2 days response between each step. Said people can go from first contact to hire in as little as 21-28 days. When I finally did the interview, it was pleasant enough. Not very conversational since it was scripted around the 14 Leadership Principles so it’s basically 40 minutes of storytelling and then 5 minutes to ask your own questions. After that I got an email a few days later from recruiter #2 asking that I complete a series of lengthy writing assignments. One was a questionnaire that asked me many multi-layered questions that would require a good paragraph to answer. The second was an essay discussing a time where I had to use my judgment — it was requested it be 1-3 pages single spaced with 2 being a reasonable number. Submitted and heard nothing for 5 days until I saw my application status had changed to being no longer considered. Never received a rejection notice. Message to recruiter #3 earlier that week had been unanswered. When I finally pressed the recruiter #3 for a response the next week he quickly said I had flunked the writing assessment and they weren’t moving forward. He did apologize for someone not reaching out to me but said there were crossed signals. Apparently the hiring manager liked my interview but they didn’t like my writing sample. Whole process felt impersonal and communication between the groups seemed terrible. Didn’t operate nearly as fast as they let on, either. It felt extremely over-engineered.

My recruiter and interview coordinator did a fantastic job at promptly setting up everything. One screening phone call with the recruiter, 2nd phone interview with Hiring manager, 2nd phone interview with a team member, onsite with 6 individuals each lasting an 1 hour, out of which one was a Bar raiser, part of a non related team. I received feedback within 2 days of each stage and my onsite experience was very pleasant, contrary to the horror stories I have heard. I would think its totally team and recruiter dependent. All based on the 14 leadership principles, and one case study at the onsite interview. Its critical that you talk about details of what you have worked on, but more specifically show why you chose to do one thing over the other. They are looking to understand your thought process, it more about why you did that what you did. Each interviewer at the onsite asked questions on 2 - 4 leadership principles, and its fine to repeat your stories.