Software Developer applicants have rated the interview process at Amazon with 3.5 out of 5 (where 5 is the highest level of difficulty) and assessed their interview experience as 33% positive. To compare, the company-average is 63.8% positive. This is according to Glassdoor user ratings.
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I applied through a recruiter. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Amazon (Boston, MA) in Dec 2011
Interview
This was a recruiting drive. I was contacted by email and asked if I wanted to participate in a recruiting drive in Boston. I had 4 hour long interviews one right after the other at a hotel. Amazon had rented out a suit of conference rooms for the event. The interviewers were pleasant, and seem to have a set of questions (or types of question) that they asked. Each interviewer seem to focus on different things. The interview process was very STAR (situation, task, action, result) oriented. Look this up in the web, it's worth it.
After the question, you were given a problem to work on. The problems are not difficult, just take your time and talk it out. Talking through the problem is really important since it can save you from going down the wrong path.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
There was nothing especially difficult. I'm not allowed to discuss the specific problems but I will give some general answers. There were a couple of cute problems, but mainly the problems were related to searching some space. I had 2 problems that required breadth first searches. A problem which looked more difficult than it was. This is probably the hardest type of problem, because it requires that you think about it and play with it until you see the simple solution. Think out loud, this is important.
I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in Dec 2012
Interview
I applied to amazon months before until they actually contacted me. Im assuming they do seasonal recruiting since i applied near the summer into fall and i get contacted in the winter.
I had 2 phone interviews. Both interviewers were very nice and helped when they thought it was necessary in order for you to succeed. The first phone interview was not difficult if you read all the questions on glassdoor that people posted and read the cracking interview book that somone did suggest in the intervews tab list. The book was extremely helpful. the second interview was majority coding questions and at the end of each coding question the interviewer would ask time complexities. After I ended the phone interview i thought to myself i made like 4 mistakes answering the first question and knew i was doomed from that point on. I received the generic rejection letter one week after the second phone interview.
the interview process for me lasted roughly a month because i interviewed right before the christmas vacation
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
first interview had like 5 or 6 short questions followed by a coding question which was
sum of 2 numbers within one array adds up to a target number which you have as a parameter fairly easy question if you read all the interviews questions on glassdoor.
second phone interview had 2 questions
the first one was a find the kth node in a linkedlist and the second was to check a string for "(" and ")" and there are only so many combinations that are considered valid and invalid. Valid is if all the "(" have an ending ")" for example , (( )) or ()()
Invalid would be )()( or ((()
if the string starts with ) its automatically invalid.
second interviewer asked time complexities on both of the question.