Tuesday, April 23, 2024

Amazon Leadership Principle Interview Questions

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AMAZON LEADERSHIP PRINCIPLES Interview Questions & Answers!

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SuccessandScaleBringBroadResponsibility Take for example the question“Can you tell me about a time when you influenced engineering to build a particular feature?” You can tie this into several leadershipprinciples, such as customer obsession, earn trust, invent and simplify, and think big.

SuccessandScaleBringBroadResponsibility. … Practice using the STAR method to answer the behavioral-based interviewquestions listed above, incorporating examples from the AmazonLeadershipPrinciples. Ensure each answer has a beginning, middle, and end. Describe the situation or problem, the actions you took, and the outcome.

Make sure your story is genuine, and elaborate on how you took responsibility and resolved the situation to the clients satisfaction. 2. Ownership. Give us an example of a time when you took on a task beyond your usual responsibilities.. That is not my job is not a phrase you will hear at Amazon.

Our Leadership Principles describe how Amazon does business, how leaders lead, and how we keep the customer at the center of our decisions. Our unique Amazon culture, described by our Leadership Principles, helps us relentlessly pursue our mission of being Earths most customer-centric company, best employer, and safest place to work.

ultimate id pack

  • Additional shared or linked blogs.
  • Invites to industry events .
  • Even entire buyouts of companies.

Consult With An Exponent Coach

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for Product Management, Software Engineering, Data Science, Product Marketing Management, and many more Interview Prep Courses. Here at Exponent, we understand that it may be both extremely exciting and nerve-wracking when you have an Amazon behavioral interview just on the horizon. That’s why we put together some.

Alongside our courses, we also offer industry-leading interviewing coaching to help you

  • Get an insiders look from someone whos been interviewed, got the offer, and worked at the companies youre applying at.
  • Receive an objective evaluation of where you stand as a job candidate.
  • Obtain personalized feedback and coaching to help improve and get more job offers.

to request a coaching session today. Vichitra Kidambi Abhishek Joshi,A few of our coaches have even worked at Amazon, so you can trust that they know exactly what you need to do to prepare. If you’re interested, be sure to check out the profiles of former Amazon interviewers Sai Boddupalli, and

Tell Me About A Time When You Made A Poor Customer Service Decision What Steps Did You Take To Remedy The Situation

Many Amazon jobs are customer-facing and may require employees to make various decisions about how to handle a customers situation. While talking about a mistake isnt easy, following up with how you used the experience to grow and develop can showcase you as a strong candidate.

EXAMPLE ANSWER:

In my last position, I was speaking with a customer about an order that was unexpectedly delayed. Along the way, I mistakenly said that the new delivery date was essentially guaranteed, as it seemed certain based on the available data. However, it was ultimately delayed again, which upset the customer based on what I told them previously. Fortunately, I was able to find a resolution by offering an immediate store credit refund for the original order and helping them explore our inventory to find a replacement that would arrive by the desired date. Additionally, after discussing the issue with my manager and accepting full responsibility, I was able to offer a small discount on the other item for the inconvenience, which ultimately left the customer satisfied.

You May Like: What Are Situational Interview Questions

Your Cheatsheet For The Amazon Interview

Interview coming up? Here are the top Amazon interview questions categorized by Amazon Leadership Principle that you need to be prepared to answer.

These questions are all behavioral interview questions, i.e., âtell me about a time whenâ¦â The Amazon interview process is mostly behavioral, with some technical screening depending on your role. In any case, Amazon expects you to spend a good chunk of time preparing for these. Weâve made it easier by providing some of the top interview questions and variations fo questions you can expect to be asked.

You donât have to have different answers for all of these interview questions, of course. That would be pretty tough! Rather, hereâs the best way to prepare:

  • Prepare a handful of stories based on the Leadership Principles using the STAR method. These stories can be used, re-used and reframed for each type of question thatâs asked.
  • Write out these questions and your answers in a google or excel doc .
  • Practice these stories with your interview coach who can give you direct feedback and help you refine them!
  • Regardless of your current job and desired position , the leadership principles are going to play a critical part in your preparation for the Amazon interview. If you struggle answering any of these questions, this should be your area of focus until youâve come up with solid answers!

    Sample Answers: Avoid This Trap

    22 Amazon Leadership Principles Interview Questions &  Answers

    We know that some websites offer candidates sample answers to Amazon interview questions. We chose not to follow suit because it is a dangerous and irresponsible preparation strategy. From an ethics standpoint, we believe in fair and unbiased competition for roles, and Amazon is doing an outstanding job at running an equitable and transparent interview process. From an interview success standpoint, regurgitating canned interview responses from the internet has a high risk of interview failure: experienced interviewers can easily spot disingenuous responses.

    There are no shortcuts to landing a role at Amazon. You must prepare to put the time and effort into getting prepared for your interviews. We recommend that you treat this process as a learning journey that will enhance your interview skills for either Amazon or any other employer in Big Tech.

    Read Also: How To Prepare For A Teaching Assistant Interview

    Hire And Develop The Best

    Leaders raise the performance bar with every hire and promotion. They recognize exceptional talent, and willingly move them throughout the organization. Leaders develop leaders and take seriously their role in coaching others. We work on behalf of our people to invent mechanisms or development like Career Choice.

    Practice questions on how to develop the best.

    Amazon leaders raise the performance bar with every hire and promotion. They recognize exceptional talent and move them throughout the organization. Leaders develop leaders and take seriously their role in coaching others.

    In this way, Amazon creates a culture of excellence that starts with our leaders and extends to all members of the Amazon family.

    How To Answer Amazon Interview Questions

    While you could just jump into the fray, memorize a few Amazon interview questions, and be done with it, thats not the best way to go about things. Sure, you might be ready to handle specific questions. But, if something unexpected comes up, you might be caught flatfooted. No one wants that.

    With the right techniques and overall strategy, you can face off against unanticipated questions. Now, exactly how you need to prepare can and will be a bit nuanced. After all, there is a slew of positions at Amazon, and each one involves something different.

    How do you make sure youre ready for YOUR Amazon interview?

    Start by reading the job description for the position. In that handful of paragraphs, youll find a ton of specific, actionable information about what the hiring manager is looking for in a perfect candidate.

    For example, the list of must-have skills you find on most job descriptions reflects their priorities. Those keywords or qualities you see over and over? Yeah, those fall into that category, too.

    Without a doubt, you can expect to have to speak about your capabilities in those areas, so reflect on your abilities and think about relevant examples from your work history that you can describe. That way, you can discuss your capabilities with ease.

    MIKE’S TIP:even when a question doesnt address those points specifically, finding ways to work them in can be beneficial.

    Recommended Reading: What To Ask When You Interview Someone

    How This Guide Will Help You Prepare For Amazon Interviews

    This guide will help you prepare for behavioural interview questions at Amazon. It has a proven D1C Amazon Interview Method to prepare for your interview, which has worked for hundreds of candidates who have landed job offers with Amazon.

    Note that we wrote this guide with the intent to help genuine candidates prepare. Therefore, we don’t offer tips on manipulating Amazon’s interview process, and we encourage all candidates to avoid resources that try to do so.

    Also, note that this guide covers only interview questions based on Amazon’s Leadership Principles. It does not cover coding, System Design or other functional preparation topics.

    We are proud of what we have achieved with Day One Careers, and we stand firm in our aspiration to be the most credible source of guidance on how to ace Amazon’s behavioural interviews.

    Sample Answer Using The Star Method

    Amazon Leadership Principles – Interview Questions and Answers – Preparation Guide

    Here’s a sample answer a member of the Exponent community gave to “Tell me about a time you made a mistake.”

    Situation: Let me tell you about a time where a website I managed suddenly showed slow performance. Our mistake was that it went unnoticed until a user reported the issue to management. As a PM for that project, I took full responsibility for the situation and worked with the engineering team to quickly resolve it.

    Tasks: This mistake taught me the importance of focusing and monitoring non-functional requirements. That’s in addition to new feature development /adoption where I usually spend my time.

    Action: After deploying the quick fix, I ensured that such a mistake doesnt get repeated. I did this by putting a good application management tool in place and set it up to receive email alerts and necessary Pagerduty alerts when website behavior exceeds set thresholds/SLAs. I personally took the effort to learn the tool myself to further analyze past issues and call out optimization areas to engineering.

    Result: With that effort, we are able to show consistent page load times to be less than 3s. I also shared my learnings with other PMs in my team in a brown bag session so they could also benefit.

    Using this method, your interviewer will learn a lot of useful information about you in a short amount of time. This answer goes beyond what an HR manager might have even listed in the job description.

    Also Check: Product Manager Questions To Ask Interviewer

    How Long Should An Answer To An Amazon Interview Question Last

    We’ve coached many candidates who came to our sessions with a assumption that your initial STAR response to an Amazon interview question should only last for 2 minutes. Unfortunately, most of them got this idea from various YouTube videos advocating this length of a STAR response.

    So allow us to be crystal clear: the length of your initial STAR answer to an Amazon interview question should be around ten minutes. Anything more than ten minutes turns your response into a monologue and cuts into the interviewer’s time to drill down and follow up. On the other hand, anything less than five minutes will not give you enough time to land the story’s basic facts and will lead to a wasted interview.

    Example Of An Actual Conflict

    • âThey said X. I said Y. And then time passed. They still said X and I still said Y. So, I did research on X and Y. More time passes. I showed this research to get buy-in from some Important People. Then I showed my research to the People Who Said X. More time passes. The People Who Said X werenât convinced until Z happened. Then the People Who Said X got on board and said Y.â

    EXAMPLE:”One conflict I had with my manager was about integrating a third-party API. They thought this service would improve performance. My research showed it improved performance marginally but complicated maintenance significantly. After gaining support from the team lead, I walked my manager through the data flows. They werenât convinced however, they were more open to the idea. At the urging of myself and the team lead, the manager took it to one of their stakeholders who agreed that the long-term maintenance costs were too high to justify using this service. This led to us not integrating the third-party service that had been proposed.”

    Recommended Reading: Cyber Security Questions To Ask In An Interview

    Question: How Do You Get To An Understanding Of What The Customers Needs Are

    You might feel like you should answer by saying something like “I do customer research” but they want a specific example of something that you did at work in the past and not a general answer.

    This is the answer given by a Senior Digital Product Manager:

    “I use quantitative and qualitative approaches. Quantitative is looking at data to derive insights. Data can be what are customers doing when they use your product and if you’re using a digital product you could use an approach like web analytics. Qualitative approaches you can simply ask them about their needs about how they use your product, but a better way is to immerse yourself into their problem space and ask where does the product fit into their daily life today? For example, in looking at my top customers, in terms of the customers most engaged on my platform, I can see that content about IT certification is very popular. As a result we started doing online trainings and certifications. So instead of just a course or video, we do live trainings now. Those turned out to be really popular. So it seems that anything we give them in terms of IT certifcation is really popular. So I’ve started to talk to customers about the role of certification in their workplace. It turns out that it’s important because it’s tied to promotions.”

    This answer could be improved. How could you make it better? Let’s break it down into P-A-R first.

    How could you use the same info but fix the structure? Move it around this way:

    Preparing For Amazon Behavioral Questions

    Amazon behavioral interview questions leadership principles

    Now, its important to understand that talking about your skills is only one part of the equation. You also need to be ready for Amazon behavioral interview questions.

    Amazon adores behavioral interview questions. Usually, its because of the belief that past behavior indicates future success. Plus, it gives them clues about a candidates personality and behavioral traits, as well as how well a person aligns with the companys core leadership principles .

    Some of these can be a little tricky, but when handled properly, behavioral interview questions are also chances to shine. Begin by embracing the STAR Method. With that, you can take a boring response and carefully polish it into a captivating answer. Couple that with the Tailoring Method, and you have an approach that focuses on personalization, customizing your responses to the role and company.

    In fact we we wanted to let you know that we created an amazing free cheat sheet that will give you word-for-word answers for some of the toughest interview questions you are going to face in your upcoming interview. After all, hiring managers will often ask you more generalized interview questions!

    Read Also: How To Answer Interview Questions For Supervisor Position

    Example Amazon Behavioral Interview Questions: Invent And Simplify

    • Tell me about a time when you gave a simple solution to a challenging problem.
    • Tell me about a time when you were working on an initiative and saw an opportunity to do something bigger or better than the initial focus.
    • Tell me about a time when you found there was a more efficient way to accomplish a task someone was working on. How did you convey it to them?

    #4 Are Right, A Lot

    “Leaders are right a lot. They have strong judgment and good instincts. They seek diverse perspectives and work to disconfirm their beliefs.”

    As this principle may sound on the surface, it is not about the leaders never being wrong, instead, about leaders being open to being wrong. Amazon expects its leaders to recognize that every opinion matters and should be valued. Regardless of what position or seniority an employee belongs to, they are allowed to voice their opinion, and the decision between right and wrong should be based on what the task is, what options are available and which solution leads to the best results. At the same time, leaders are expected to make quick decisions with little information. When answering questions for this principle, talk to your interviewers about your failures, what you learned from them, how you dealt with situations that required you to make quick decisions with little or no information, and how you incorporated your team’s views to come up with the best possible solution, even if it was contrary to your viewpoint.

    How The Leadership Principles Are Used In The Behavioral Questions

  • You may be asked a question like this,“Tell me about a time when you demonstrated customer obsession.” This is the most straightforward way to ask about the principles, by using the principle’s exact words.
  • You may also be asked a question like this about a principle, “How do you build client relationships.” This second type of question doesn’t use the words “customer obsession” or “ownership” or the other exact words in the principles so you might not realize it’s one of the principle questions. This question has the word “client” so it might have given you a clue that it’s a customer obsession question, but what if they ask you “When have you gone above and beyond?” Do you know what that principle is? Most people know this is a principle question but can’t remember what principle it is.
  • You may also be asked, “How do you resonate with the principle, ‘Are right, a lot’?” This is an opinion and culture question. Some people find these easy to answer and some find them more difficult. If you haven’t thought about this principle beforehand and how it fits in with the Amazon culture and how you fit in with the Amazon culture will you be able to answer the question? This may seem easy to you but I personally wouldn’t be able to answer this without preparing.
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