This guide is designed to help you prepare for behavioral interview questions during your Amazon interview process. Our suggestions are grounded in our extensive experience conducting thousands of candidate interviews and coaching sessions.
We have included actual Amazon interview questions for your reference, but we advise you to thoroughly read this guide and consult the official Amazon website (Reference 1) for additional information. Although we cannot promise that these strategies will guarantee a job offer, we believe that adhering to this guide will significantly improve your chances of success. We suggest that you bookmark this guide and regularly refer back to it throughout your Amazon interview preparation journey.
Keep in mind that Amazon has a set of 16 Leadership Principles, and interviewers often ask behavioral questions related to these principles to assess a candidate’s fit for the company culture.
Here are some behavioral interview questions inspired by Amazon’s 16 Leadership Principles:
- Customer Obsession: Can you share an example of a time when you went above and beyond to delight a customer?
- Ownership: Tell me about a time when you took ownership of a project or task that was not part of your initial job description.
- Invent and Simplify: Can you describe a situation when you had to come up with an innovative solution to a complex problem?
- Are Right, A Lot: Tell me about a time when you had to make a critical decision with limited information. What was the outcome?
- Learn and Be Curious: How have you incorporated a piece of new learning into your work recently?
- Hire and Develop the Best: Share an example of a time you mentored or developed someone on your team and how it benefited your organization.
- Insist on the Highest Standards: Can you describe a time when you set a high standard for your team and how you helped them achieve it?
- Think Big: Share an example of a time when you created or contributed to a long-term strategy that required thinking beyond the immediate situation.
- Bias for Action: Describe a situation when you had to make a quick decision in a fast-paced environment. How did you ensure it was the right one?
- Frugality: Tell me about a time when you achieved a significant outcome with limited resources.
- Earn Trust: Share a situation where you had to earn the trust of a team or a client. What actions did you take?
- Dive Deep: Can you describe a time when you had to get into the weeds to understand a problem fully? How did that influence the outcome?
- Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit: Share an example of when you disagreed with a decision at work. How did you express your disagreement, and how did you commit after the decision was made?
- Deliver Results: Can you talk about a time when you faced unexpected obstacles on a project but still managed to deliver the expected results?
- Strive to be Earth’s Best Employer: Tell me about a time when you made a decision or took an action that was particularly beneficial for your team’s well-being or development.
- Success and Scale Bring Broad Responsibility: Can you describe a situation when you made a decision considering its broader impact on stakeholders outside of your immediate team or project?
- Invent and Simplify: Can you share an instance when you simplified a process that resulted in significant efficiency gains?
- Earn Trust: How have you handled a situation where you made a mistake? What steps did you take to rectify it and rebuild any lost trust?
- Dive Deep: Tell me about a time when you had to immerse yourself in the details of a project to ensure its success.
- Frugality: Can you describe a time when you had to be creative to solve a problem due to budgetary constraints?
Other Behavioral Questions
- Tell me about a time when you were faced with a problem, and you did not have all the information needed to solve it. How did you go about finding and interpreting the information needed to make a decision?
- Describe a situation where you had to take a risk because it was the right thing to do.
- Tell me about a time when you had to leave a task unfinished.
- Give an example of when you had to work with someone who was difficult to get along with. How did you handle interactions with that person?
- Tell me about a time when you made a decision that was unpopular and how you handled implementing it.
- How do you handle failure? Provide an example of when a failure led to an improvement or innovation.
- Describe a time when you took the lead on a project. What was the outcome?
- Tell me about a time when you had to work under tight deadlines.
- Can you give me an example of a time when you used your fact-finding skills to gain the information needed to solve a problem?
- Tell me about a time when you had to make a split-second decision.
Technical/Coding Questions
Leetcode definitely is the top website to prepare coding sessions, besides, you can also try these coding questions as exercises.
- Write a function to detect a loop in a linked list.
- Write code to reverse a string.
- Implement the merge sort algorithm.
- Design a system that scales to millions of users.
- How do you find the missing number in a given integer array of 1 to 100?
- Write a function that takes an array of integers and returns the start and end indices of the largest sum in the array.
- How would you store 1 million phone numbers?
- Write a function to calculate the factorial of a number.
- How would you design a recommendation system, similar to what Amazon uses?
- Explain the concepts of OOP, and how they are implemented in the language of your choice.
- How do you implement a least recently used (LRU) cache?
- How does garbage collection work in the language of your choice?
System Design Questions
- How would you design Twitter’s feed algorithm?
- How would you design an auto-complete feature for a search engine?
- How would you design a distributed key-value store?
- How would you design a feature to handle large file uploads?
- Design a URL shortening service.
Other Possible Questions
- Describe the project you’ve worked on that you’re most proud of. What did you do that worked out particularly well?
- How have you used machine learning in your past projects?
- What are the advantages of multithreading? And what issues can it cause?
- What are some differences between SQL and NoSQL? In what situations would you use each one?
- How do you test your code?
- Can you discuss a time when you improved the scalability of a system?
As for answering these questions, the STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Result) method is a useful approach for behavioral questions. For technical questions, practice is key. Websites like LeetCode, HackerRank, and Codewars offer problems that you can use to practice your skills.
What is STAR method?
The STAR method is an interview response technique that allows you to answer behavioral questions effectively. The acronym stands for:
- Situation: Set the scene and provide the necessary details of your example.
- Task: Describe what your responsibility was in that situation.
- Action: Explain exactly what steps you took to address it.
- Result: Share the outcomes of your actions.
The main idea is to tell a story that presents a clear picture of you and your work style. Here are some examples:
- Question: Tell me about a time when you had to work under tight deadlines.
- Situation: In my previous role as a software engineer, we had an important project for a key client that was scheduled to go live in a month.
- Task: My task was to code several key features of the project. However, our team lead fell ill unexpectedly, and I had to take over some of his responsibilities as well.
- Action: To manage the increased workload, I prioritized the tasks, breaking them down into manageable segments, and followed a strict schedule. I also coordinated with the rest of the team to ensure everyone was on track.
- Result: We were able to deliver the project on time, and the client was extremely happy with our work. This experience helped me improve my time management and leadership skills.
- Question: Can you tell me about a time you faced a conflict while working as part of a team?
- Situation: When I was a junior software developer, I was part of a team developing a new feature for our product.
- Task: I noticed that there was a recurring disagreement between two of my team members about the best way to implement this feature. The disagreement was stalling our progress.
- Action: I suggested a team meeting where each party could present their point of view and we could decide as a team which route to take. I made sure to moderate the discussion to keep it constructive.
- Result: Both team members presented their ideas, and after a healthy discussion, we decided on a mixed approach that combined the strengths of both ideas. This resolved the disagreement, and we were able to complete the project successfully.
- Question: Describe a situation in which you identified a problem and took action to correct it rather than waiting for someone else to do so.
- Situation: I was working as a software engineer on a project and noticed that our bug-tracking system was not up-to-date, causing a lot of confusion and hindering our progress.
- Task: As someone who values efficiency, I knew updating and maintaining this system was crucial for the team’s productivity.
- Action: I took the initiative to not only update the current bug tracking status but also implemented a process to ensure it remained updated. I demonstrated the process to the team and explained the benefits.
- Result: This new process drastically reduced confusion within the team and improved our efficiency. Bugs were addressed more swiftly, and our project progress was smoother thereafter.
These examples are intended to show how you can structure your responses using the STAR method for different types of behavioral questions.
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