How to Pass Your Amazon Interview

I’ve been a hiring manager for the last 15 years of my career and have been working in the tech field for 25 years. During my career, I’ve conducted interviews at Amazon, eBay, VMware, and a number of other companies. But to get into each one of those companies, I was also a candidate just like you and I had to pass those interviews. In fact, I’ve passed the Amazon interview on four separate occasions (but didn’t accept all of those jobs). Not only did my techniques allow me to pass the interview, they also allowed me to negotiate a nearly $100,000 higher salary than what Amazon initially offered. And now I’m here to teach you the secrets to pass your interview.

If you want to pass your Amazon interview, here’s what you need to know, from someone who passed Amazon’s interviews and was a hiring manager and Head of Business Intelligence engineering at Amazon.

What is the interview really about?

Your interview is really about you telling a business story. It’s actually not all that different from a TV show that you’ve watched on Netflix, except maybe your Netflix show is a bit more entertaining. Like any good show, the show follows a defined story structure, and your interview isn’t any different. There needs to be an overview of the situation, some sort of challenge or conflict, you need to face the challenge, and then overcome it as the hero.

If you want to hold the attention of your interviewer, you need to tell a great story.

While a structure is needed for any good story, you’re probably wondering, “How am I supposed to write a story on the spot during an interview?” The secret is, you don’t. Telling your story during the interview comes down to proper preparation before the interview, and here’s how you do it.

Interview Overview

The Amazon interview uses a STAR based interview format. STAR stands for Situation, Task, Action, and Result. This format isn’t all that different from the story structure that we outlined above. When you describe your Situation, you’re describing what’s happening and what the challenge is. When you describe the Tasks, you’re describing the things that you’re going to need to do to succeed on your journey. When you get to Actions, you’re describing the journey that you’re taking to resolve the challenge or conflict. And finally, when you’re describing the Results, you’re summarizing the outcome with you as the hero.

During the Amazon interview, you’re going to be asked a question that usually starts off with something like, “Tell me about a time when…”, which will be followed by something more specific that relates to one of 14 Amazon Leadership Principles (There’s actually 16, but you’ll never be asked about 2 of them).

Pre-Interview Prep

The key to passing the Amazon interview all comes down to preparation, but not just any preparation will do. You need to prepare in a way that is best suited for success. Unfortunately, while many people prepare, even following the guidance of the Amazon recruiting team, candidates frequently fail to prepare in an optimal way.

To prepare for your interview, you’re going to perform a few sets of tasks, and it’s going to feel like you’re peeling back an onion. I’m referring to the part where we get deeper into the layers; hopefully not bringing tears to your eyes. As you go through this process, you’re going to do a lot of writing. I’m quite serious about the actual writing or typing during this exercise. If you don’t do this, there’s a good chance that you’ll fail your interview.

Writing Your Stories

First, I recommend writing down a bullet list of all of the projects that you’ve worked on in your career. I want you to list each of these bullets in a specific format that contains the company name, a 3–7 word summary of the project, and a result. For example, this might look like, “Company X — Created automated WBR report — Saved 500 hrs/yr”.

After you’ve created this list, I want you to go back to each one of these bullet items and write out a sub-bullet outline with an individual bullet for each part of the STAR format.

Story: Company X — Created automated WBR report — Saved 500 hrs/yr

• Situation:
• Task:
• Action:
• Result:

Next, I want you to write a few sentences for each one of those bullets. Keep them relatively short and to the point. But at the same time, provide sufficient details to help the reader understand what was happening in your situation, why it was important, why someone should care, and what you did to investigate and resolve the issue. After creating your rough notes in the STAR format, I want you to go back through each of these project stories and add more details.

The first detail that I want you to add is quantifiable metrics, and not just for the Results. I want you to add these details to the Situation and in your Actions as well.

For example, if you were telling a story about a Situation where you “Were at Company X, noticed operational inefficiency”, this wouldn’t sound very important or significant. But if you quantify the situation by saying that you “Were at Company X, noticed 20 stakeholders manually building a WBR report on a weekly basis which was costing the company 1,000 hrs per year in manual labor”, this would sound much more significant. You could make this even more powerful if you provide a dollar cost estimate.

After you quantify all of the parts of your story for that project, I want you to go back to the start of your story and add more details again. But this time, I want you to add details that relate to Amazon’s Leadership Principles (LPs).

To do this, you’ll need to get familiar with the LPs and how they work in practice. If you have questions, you can find plenty of details online or you can ask your Amazon recruiter. Once you understand what they are and how they work, you’ll need to update your story with specific examples that relate to the LPs.

For example, in our situation of “noticed 20 stakeholders manually building a WBR report on a weekly basis, costing the company 1,000 hrs per year in manual labor”, we can consider one LP, “Bias for Action”. Bias for Action translates into jumping to act, without waiting around for someone to give you permission to do something, and not allowing other factors to get in your way or slow you down. Essentially, you make it happen, and you do it quickly.

In our example story, your Bias for Action component will show up in the Tasks and Actions part of your story. This might be written as, “This situation seemed like a significant opportunity to save the company money, so I Tasked myself to resolve the inefficiency by automating the creation of this report.” Not only are you jumping into action, but you’re also showing Ownership, which is another LP.

Next you might explain, “To resolve this issue, I took the following Actions. I met with each of the 20 stakeholders over the next 5 days to collect details and requirements.” Then you’ll keep adding more details about specific actions that you took.

After you add key details about the first LP, you’ll look up the next LP and go back to your story and perform the same task of adding more details related to the LP. Keep doing this until you have elements related to all of the Amazon Leadership Principles. At this point, your story might feel a bit lengthy, but don’t worry. We’ll address that during the interview.

This takes time, but it’s crucial for your success.

Practicing your Stories

The last step in the preparation process is to practice speaking your story, and it’s going to take time as well. I’ve heard others say that when public speakers prepare for a new presentation, they may spend approximately 60 hours preparing for just 1 hour of time on the stage. While you might not have to spend that much time practicing for your interviews, the more practice you get, the better off you’ll likely be.

During this practice, you should nearly memorize all of your stories and then recite them from memory. Practice reciting over and over until you are relaxed and delivering with confidence and without mistakes. Again, this is going to take time, but it’s crucial. If you are perfect in practice, you probably shouldn’t expect to perform better at game time.

Getting Ready for the Interview

With your bullet list of projects and stories committed to memory, the last thing that I want you to do is build a matrix of the Leadership Principles and your associated projects. For each LP, I want you to list as many stories as possible that seem to have elements of the LP. Don’t worry if not every story that you have will necessarily be a great example of an LP. Just make sure that you have a few stories for each LP.

Build a matrix of the Leadership Principles and your projects.

For this exercise, I recommend putting your matrix into Excel or Google Sheets. Don’t worry about memorizing because at this point that’s probably too much to remember. Then print it out and tape it to your desk. I’ll explain what to do with this in the next section.

During the Interview

With all of your practice behind you, it’s time to deliver your best performance in the interview. You’re probably going to feel a bit nervous because even though you wrote and practiced your stories, you still don’t know exactly what the interviewer is going to ask. If you’re not careful, you may forget your stories, over-explain, or fail to connect it to the specific LP. But here’s how you’re going to succeed.

First, when you get the question, write it down! I cannot stress this enough. I can’t even begin to tell you how many candidates fail when telling a story because they didn’t write down the question.

Second, I want you to recite it back to the interviewer. This will accomplish three things. First, it will allow you to clarify that you heard the question properly, avoiding accidentally answering something different from what was asked. Second, it will solidify this question in your memory and you’ll be less likely to be the candidate saying, “umm, can you repeat the question, I forgot what you wanted”. And third, it will buy you some time to consider the story that you want to tell.

Next, I want you to say, “Thank you. Do you mind if I take 60 seconds to collect my thoughts?” This might seem awkward if you’ve never done it before, but it’s a perfectly acceptable response.

Write down the question, recite it back, and take time to collect your thoughts.

During the time that you’re collecting your thoughts, the first thing that you need to do is tol look at your matrix printout that you taped to your desk. Quickly try to map the question to one of the LPs that you have listed. Next, pick the best story that you wrote under that LP. After that, quickly write out 3–4 bullets about that story, highlighting the elements that tie back to the LP that your interviewer is asking about.

When you’re ready, take a structured approach to telling your story and make sure that you tell it using the STAR format, in that order. Also, make sure to explicitly call out the words, “Situation, Task, Action, and Results”. For example, you can say, “I’d like to share an example where I was working in a Situation where…”, “I (or my manager) Tasked myself out to…”, “I took the following x Actions. The first Action I took was…”, “The Results of these actions were …”

If that sounds too formal, don’t worry. The structure works. Also, your interviewer probably isn’t going to find it too formal. Instead, they’ll probably find it refreshing because you’re creating road signs in your story which will allow the interviewer to easily understand what’s happening and when you’re transitioning from one part to the next.

After you provide your answer, you’ll receive a number of follow-up questions. During this part of the process, the interviewer will be looking to understand specific details. They are doing this for two key reasons.

First, they want to gain clarity about the scope of the project, the significance, and how you addressed the challenges. And the second main reason is because they are trying to understand what you did, or if your story is really about you being part of a team doing the work, as opposed to you being the person who actually did the work and delivered results.

When you provide your follow-up response, pause to think about how you want to respond, quantify your answers as much as possible, keep your answers short, and make sure that you’re telling the interviewer what you did, not what the team did.

Conclusion

I’m a former Head of Business Intelligence Engineering at Amazon and I’ve passed the Amazon interview on four separate occasions. I’ve also been a hiring manager for the last 15 years in my 25 year career in tech. The techniques that I described above allowed me to pass my interviews and negotiate nearly $100,000 more than my initial offer. If you follow the same techniques, you’ll be more prepared, less stressed, and have a higher chance of receiving an offer.

Brandon Southern, MBA, is a Sr. Director of Analytics and the founder of Analytics Mentor. With a 25-year career in the tech industry, Brandon has excelled in diverse roles encompassing analytics, software development, project management, and more. He has led analytics teams at Amazon, eBay, VMware, GameStop, and more.

Brandon offers custom 1:1 coaching for passing the Amazon interview and growing your skills for data-related careers.

You can learn more about Brandon and Analytics Mentor at http://www.analyticsmentor.io/