“Amazon has a special interview process that you will need to prepare for. It is not something you can just wing.”
Glassdoor review of Amazon’s interview process
Amazon behavioral interview questions test for cultural behaviors that Amazon especially values. These behaviors are embodied in their leadership principles. They’ve become famously intimidating.
Behavioral questions are often phrased as Tell me about a time when questions, and are designed to understand your future behavior from how you describe your thinking and processes in your past behavior.
Amazon particularly favors a method called STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Result) to convey your narrative of what you did when to an interviewer in a structured, clear way.
In this article we’re going to take you through Amazon’s interviewing process to help you understand why they do what they do. We’ll also walk you through how to master the STAR method when answering Amazon behavioral interview questions, and share other tips and tricks to help you understand and prepare for Amazon interview questions overall.
This guide is aimed to help you prepare for Amazon behavioral interview questions. It does not help with technical, data literacy or writing sample tests.
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How Amazon interviews
Amazon Interview Process
The interview process is typically comprised of
- A phone screen from the internal recruiting team. This is a skills check with some Amazon behavioral questions to ensure you can make it through a full interview process. Take it seriously; like everyone at Amazon the person you will be speaking to has been hired for excellence.
- Further interviews with anywhere between 2 and 7 people. This will include the hiring manager, members of the hiring team and a Bar Raiser interview. Each session will last between 45-60 minutes, and you may be asked to attend a hiring day.
- [Sometimes] tests of some sort. These can be data literacy tests, technical interviews, or writing samples. If you are given one of these, you should invest time in it and prepare well for it. If you’re asked to do one, doing it well is a key requirement to land the role.
Amazon is focused on ‘hiring well, rather than hiring quickly’. The process will take as long as it takes. Amazon would rather leave roles open than fill them with the wrong candidates.
Amazon interview questions
Amazon’s interview process is based on behavioral questioning. Brain teasers or case studies do not tend to come up.
Every role will be assessed for fit with Amazon’s Leadership Principles, which are behavioral articulations of laws, or traits that the company would like its employees to embody. Amazon interview questions therefore seek to uncover whether a candidate embodies those Amazon desired behaviors.
Therefore when interviewing at Amazon behavioral interview questions will account for the majority of your interview process. Different leadership principles are tested for in each round, and principles where a possible weakness is perceived are tested deeply to be sure of your capability.
Amazon are specifically looking for standout strength in the Leadership Principles most critical for each role.
For example, managers will need to score highly on ‘Are Right, a Lot’ and on ‘Think Big’. This is not to say you can not match with multiple principles – just that it’s ok to be weaker and open to coaching in areas which are less critical for the role you’re pursuing.
When thinking about fit with Leadership Principles it’s helpful to think about a heat map, and how you might score in terms of strengths and weaknesses across the principles. It’s also useful to think about how your experience might map to different principles.
Amazon behavioral interview questions process
Behavioral interviewing is a technique that asks candidates about their prior actions in professional situations in order to understand their personality, their competencies and how they might perform in certain future scenarios.
At the core of behavioral based interviewing is the concept that historic behavior can predict future behavior.
If this person did this thing in this situation, when confronted with similar situation they will likely behave [similarly] or [apply their learnings from the previous situation].
Behavioral questions are usually open ended and start with ‘Describe a situation when you [had to win over a difficult colleague]’ or ‘Tell me about a time when you [took on a project and went above and beyond]’.
Amazon behavioral interview questions might ask ‘When do you think it’s ok to push back or say no to an unreasonable customer request?’, designed to test your fit against Customer Obsession.
Get the Amazon interview questions cheat sheet: Google Sheets
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Structured interviewing
Amazon interview processes are structured in advance, with different people testing different aspects of the role requirements, using different Amazon behavioral interview questions to uncover information. They refer to this as ‘the loop’.
Interviewers are required to keep detailed notes and scorecards of how candidates answer their Amazon behavioral interview questions. Be aware of this.
Do not assume that you can use the same answer or situation repeatedly when answering Amazon behavioral interview questions. Don’t expect (as sometimes happens in other companies) for the interviews to all follow the same line or pattern of questioning.
“The first thing everyone does before making a decision on a candidate is to take time to read everyone’s feedback. As a candidate, you’ll hear and see lots of notes being taken during your interview (sometimes to a fault).
It’s critical that the feedback is detailed, uses examples to back up claims, and is objective. It’s harder to be objective than you think when you instinctively want to like or dislike people, which comes with all types of potential bias. Objective feedback also helps guard against nasties like “this person isn’t a cultural fit”, which isn’t related to either a leadership principle or functional requirement. It’s worth noting that everyone has to submit their own written objective feedback before they can see anyone else’s, so we get an unbiased view from the group before making a decision.”
“Interviewing at AWS: Advice and tips from 250 interviews”, Nick Matthews
The way that this might manifest is that if a principle is particularly critical to a role you might be expected to have multiple examples to demonstrate your fit. You might be asked a series of Amazon behavioral interview questions designed to examine the same behavioral principle from different angles and using different scenarios.
Additionally should you give a weaker answer to an Amazon behavioral interview question in one round, but still progress, you should expect that behavior to be tested again, in order to understand if it’s a genuine weakness, or simply a bad answer.
Bar Raiser role at Amazon
The Bar Raiser is a specific additional title within Amazon: a volunteer position on top of the day job based on internal nomination.
“Bar Raisers are skilled Amazon interviewers who undergo lengthy training after being nominated and accepted into the programme. They are passionate about our hiring process and serve as objective advisors during the interview process. Bar Raisers hold positions that are typically outside of the business for which the candidate is being interviewed, so they spot aspects of a candidate’s strengths and learning opportunities that we might otherwise miss. They are experts in evaluating talent against our Leadership Principles”
‘What is a ‘Bar Raiser’ at Amazon’ – About Amazon
The role of the Bar Raiser is to
- Assist the hiring team to prepare for interviews, including setting the right type of Amazon behavioral interview questions. They assist the hiring team with topics like: Which principles should this candidate over index on in order to be successful in the role? Which principles can they be trained to adopt and which are integral?
- Ensure the process is run in a robust way: Bar Raisers make sure that written feedback is provided and assessment is fair and unbiased according to a pre-agreed set of Amazon behavioral interview questions. They audit the interviewing team and leader’s capabilities and coach them through the interview loop. They’re mindful that every candidate is likely also a customer. They might push for more diverse panels to review the candidate to avoid confirmation bias or other types of bias. They will work to make sure that the timing is appropriate for the candidate, that the candidate has context on the process, and that sufficient information is being gathered on the candidate to inform decision making appropriately.
- Level for the company: the person being hired must be better than 50% of those currently in similar roles, and it’s the Bar Raiser’s job to act as quality assurance. The Bar Raiser is the final decision maker on whether the candidate gets an offer at Amazon or not.
Rather than in some companies where 3-6 months of probation is a formality, at Amazon it’s extremely intensive. Recent hires do fail. As you can imagine, if they have relocated or given up great roles for the job and do not make it through probation, it can cause serious personal impact.
Ultimately if you don’t get a role at Amazon, it might be for the best given how clearly they have defined their culture.
What Bar Raisers look for on top of Leadership Principle fit
- Resourcefulness: Amazon operates as a system of start ups, and there are few playbooks or straight lines to how to do something.
- Role Models: Amazon is excited to work with candidates who bring leadership skills, functional expertise, or something else to the organization. The Bar Raiser wants to be excited about you joining.
- Not afraid of failure: Due to Amazon’s decentralized operating model, and ambitious vision, the company looks for people who learn lessons from failure, and aren’t afraid to share what they have risked and the outcomes.
- Have you earned their trust: Do they believe what you’re telling them? Are you authentic? Have you proved you can deliver?
- Ability to scale: Amazon comes across lots of candidates who could ‘do the job’ as it is now, at a basic level. But should the job change or evolve, or become more complex, they wouldn’t be able to step up. There might be a great functional fit, but leadership gaps.
Questions Bar Raisers might look to answer with the hiring committee:
- Is this person better than 50% of people who work here today?
- After a year would this person be successful here, or are the risks just too high?
- What is their super power? Do you admire them?
- Do we think the actions we have seen are driven by their surrounding culture? If given a different environment, would they adapt?
How to prepare for an Amazon behavioral interview
Things the interviewers specifically look for:
- Understanding of the principles: they are sent out in advance to candidates, but they can be easy to misconstrue. It’s key to research the principles properly and gain a proper, deep understanding of each one.
- Answers which are credible: it can be easy to make the headline / principle title point, but forget the detailed language in the description. Doing so can mean that you miss being credible.
- Preparation: Interviews at Amazon are a high bar, and it’s rare to get through without any preparation. Failure to prepare is an immediate red flag on fit.
Check out Understanding the Amazon Leadership Principles here
Using the STAR method to answer Amazon behavioral interview questions
Amazon specifically advocates for using STAR to answer Amazon behavioral interview questions. It’s worth investing time to deploy it confidently.
The STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Result) framework is a useful structure to keep you focused, clear and concise when answering Amazon behavioral interview questions. It encourages you to explain things step by step, and allows a clear path through the narrative to display your thinking and accomplishments:
- [Situation] Describe the context you were in
- [Task] The specific task or activity you had to perform
- [Action] What you did
- [Result] The impact of what you did (result).
Example question: “Tell me about a situation where you didn’t have all the required data, but you had to make a decision. Walk me through what happened.”
Situation: “When I was working at MyWowser, the data we could access an excel spreadsheet daily with 10 key operating metrics and no more. We additionally looked at a lot of anecdotal customer feedback and real time actions onsite, such as purchase volumes on specific lines.”
Task: “My job was to ensure we achieved certain revenue goals by selecting units to sell at certain prices and margins and manually deciding distribution placement and cadence. C-suite invested resources to automate these tasks with machine learning. My role was to work with the product and engineering squad responsible for this. We did not have a top down / or managerial directive on what good looked like. The company was under financial pressure and so we had to maintain revenue while getting to an automation goal which paid back.”
Action: “The product owner’s role was to manage the team, the model and the tests, while mine was to define the testing strategy, the key inputs and guardrails and manage stakeholder comms. I defined a list of key metrics which had to be included in the model and defined success metrics for A/B tests. The model went through 3 cycles of A/B testing with me refining and adding inputs until it achieved an A/B result of -2% down on cash-in versus my team. There was a slight customer experience upside as the model weighted ratings and refunds slightly higher than cash and demand factors. Throughout this I kept senior stakeholders informed and confident in the progress of the tests.
Result: “The result of this was that a reduction in headcount by 80% within the team across EMEA within 12 months. While not all of this can be attributed to this automation event, since we also automated other aspects of the team’s role, it was undoubtedly the most significant achievement, since it proved internally that the team could be automated. The loss in cash-in was offset by longer term salary and overhead savings, adding 1.3% to regional EBITDA”
Get the Amazon leadership principles interview cheat sheet: Google Sheets
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When deploying the STAR method to answer Amazon behavioral interview questions, remember these points
- Answers must be comprehensible and credible. It should not require the interviewer to ask follow up questions that are aimed at simply understanding your point. In order to achieve that you need to clearly describe the situation with brevity, without jargon or internal language or too many technical terms.
- Use facts and data to establish benchmarks: Ground the story in a plausible reality and show what impact you made, giving enough data to make it clear where you took xx number from and to,
- Pick the right story for the right situation: It’s easy to think that in order to answer Amazon behavioral interview questions that you should have your story or script ready. But your answers need to flex and changes according to the leadership principle that the Amazon interviewer is testing for, and according to the level of role you’re applying for. Since Amazon roles follow a strict level system with expected competencies at every level, it’s important to strike the right note at the right job level. The Amazon behavioral interview questions you will be asked have been selected to uncover behaviors which are key in order to be successful in the role.
- Illustrate don’t state: give examples of real situations rather than making statements like ‘I am very customer focused’; that’s an advert not a demonstration of behavior.
- Make sure the story is one with a decent impact: fixing small bugs or making small tweaks is not sufficient to impress the interviewer.
- The key thing to get to is what you did and what the result was: do not spend too long on the situation or the task; focus on your behaviors and the impact you had.
- If something went wrong in the middle – share it: Amazon is looking for people who are comfortable with failure and who learn from it. Examples which show you adapting to failure shouldn’t be off the table.
If you are asked for a writing sample, use the same methods there.
Get the Interview Question Framework Flashcards: Google Slides
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Timing your answers
A typical Amazon interview will last between 45 minutes to one hour. If you break that down into its component parts:
- 8-10 mins on introductions
- 25-35 mins on interviewer questions
- 10-15 mins on your questions
25 to 35 minutes is not a very long time. Typically interviewers will ask 2-3 Amazon interview behavioral questions within it.
You want to be able to balance giving the interviewer a clear, structured answer with sufficient detail. You should be able to deliver your answer in 5-7 minutes, and leave time for some questions.
Practicing answering Amazon behavioral interview questions
You should practice your answers with a friend / partner / housemate to spot the holes, where you’re woolly, and where you talk for too long.
Use a tool like the Amazon behavioral interview questions cheatsheet above to help them understand the right questions to ask and what they should be looking for. You can also use this tool to map out answers to sample Amazon behavioral interview questions until you get so comfortable with STAR that it becomes natural.
With your practice partner
- Delivering the answer to one of the Amazon behavioral interview questions in a 3 minute period and asking them if there’s sections they’d like you to dive into further
- Delivering the answer in 7 minutes with your interview prep partner proactively asking questions and pushing for extra detail at the end of each section of your STAR structured answer
Make sure you’re comfortable explaining things using the STAR method on the spot. Get your interview prep partner to prepare you for this by asking you random questions like ‘Describe a time at your brother’s wedding when you took to the dance floor’ and answering them in the framework until it feels natural.
Asking questions when answering Amazon behavioral interview questions
Don’t be afraid to ask your interviewer questions if you think it will help you clarify things or deliver a better answer. For example: ‘There was a time in my career where XX happened – does that sound like the right sort of thing to go through to answer your question?’
Do not fail to do your own prep work on which questions you would like to ask them. It’s really easy to be so focused on nailing Amazon behavioral interview questions as a technique that you forget to do your own homework.
Interviewing is a two-way street and you’re looking for as much information as they are. Great questions from you can sway an interview in your favor. Questions should become more detailed the longer you go through the process – you shouldn’t be asking generic questions by round 6.
I not We when answering Amazon interview questions
Remember to pick examples where you were the person who demonstrated the behavior. Avoid talking about things you did as a team, or times when the team drove a result. Giving examples where you aren’t clearly the center of the story creates confusion about what you were personally responsible for.
That doesn’t mean you can’t pick examples where you accomplished goals as a team. It just means you have to clearly state what you did (and you alone) to help.
Example of an answer which makes it sound like the team did the heavy lifting, rather than you:
‘After a year of pain regarding our checkout infrastructure, including many delays to key projects for senior stakeholders, it was suggested that we review provider. After the team looked into various options and ran a session with senior management, we decided to migrate from X to X. We staggered the migration into three parts to deliver impact swiftly and avoid ‘no release’ for 6 months…’
Example of an answer where you sound like the person who drove the outcome:
‘When I joined as PM for the payments team, I invested significant time in speaking with senior stakeholders about their needs for payments, plus auditing competitors. It was immediately obvious that our payment infrastructure was lagging significantly behind the market, and that we were losing revenue by not being able to accept payments in more than 6 currencies, by not being able to accept common ways to pay in some of our major markets, and we were missing functionality competitors had like coupon codes.
I pulled together a gap analysis; then interviewed and drilled into timelines to fix with my engineering manager. I also scheduled and ran multiple calls with our payment provider to understand their development roadmap and whether that would meet requirements. My analysis showed that the team had minimum 3 years of work to do, and that the payment provider could never support some needs. I started advocating for different solutions…’
Understand Amazon’s organizational structure
Amazon is structured around largely autonomous, modular, small (‘two pizza’) teams. Two pizzas means: if you can’t feed the team with 2 pizzas, the team is too big.
This means that different teams have different ways of doing things; and the only source of information about that is the team itself. Remember to incorporate that into your thinking:
“What may look like a giant corporate spaceship is more accurately a bunch of ships with their masts loosely tied together. What that means as an interviewing candidate is that every team you interview will have their own ways of doing things. I’d recommend asking about the team-level details you may care about in every interview.”
“Interviewing at AWS: Advice and tips from 250 interviews”, Nick Matthews
It’s ok not to know the answer when answering Amazon interview questions
You will likely get pushed in an Amazon behavioral interview. You should have answers to the behavioral questions but let’s say you’re asked something about a skill or a piece of functional expertise you don’t have. It’s fine to say that you don’t know.
Don’t google it and then answer it on a remote call – it’s very obvious. Don’t try to bluff your way through.
The interviewer is actively trying to get down to the bottom of the bucket of all the detail they can get about you. Not knowing something is ok – after all, Learn and Be Curious is an Amazon Leadership principle.
Check out Understanding the Amazon Leadership Principles here
Don’ts when answering Amazon behavioral interview questions
Use sample answers which are not your own that you might find online: There are no answers you can learn off by heart; you have to think about how your own work experience demonstrates the principles. Interviewers will dig in and ask follow up questions that aren’t in your samples.
Prepare but don’t memorize answers word for word: Reciting canned answers is very inauthentic. The ideal state is to have some examples ready to call on, that you’re comfortable with, and leverage those.
Don’t forget to research the company: ‘Why Amazon?’ is a common question, and you should know how to answer it well. It’s worth learning about the enduring influence of its founder and as well as learning the leadership principles.
Don’t think that this work is wasted: If you do get the role, it will serve you well to understand Amazon’s culture by working through Amazon behaviors and Amazon interview questions. If you don’t, this process will make you a stronger candidate in future interviews.
Wrap up on preparing for Amazon behavioral interview questions
Things change all the time at Amazon – so don’t forget to ask about the interview process itself.
Be yourself: the interview process is specifically designed to find out who you are, and whether you’re the right fit for Amazon. If you’re not that person, they’ll find out eventually. There’s no point faking who you are or how you behave to answer some Amazon behavioral interview questions successfully if you turn out not to thrive in Amazon’s work culture.
However you might find that the real you is exactly who they are looking for: Amazon hires people for their strengths, rather than their weaknesses. If you’re a good match for Amazon, preparing well for Amazon interview questions can ensure you land your dream role.
Good luck in the process!
Hustle Badger Resources on Amazon
Create a FREE account to access the following templates:
* [Template] Amazon Leadership Principles Interview Cheat Sheet Google Doc
* [Template] Think Like Jeff Bezos Cheat Sheet Google Doc
* [Template] Amazon Press Release and FAQs Notion | Google Doc
* [Template] Interview cheatsheet; job mapping; behavioral interview experience template
* [Template] Common Product Manager Interview Questions Framework Flashcards
Hustle Badger Interview resources
Resources
FAQs
How to answer Amazon interview questions?
Amazon interview questions should be answered using the STAR method. Select strong examples from your job history that demonstrate a fit with Amazon’s Leadership Principles. Structure answers using the STAR method: Situation (the context), Task (what you had to do), Action (what you did), Result (the impact that you had). It’s advised to focus most of your answer on Action and Result sections, using detail and data to substantiate your answers.
How to answer Amazon behavioral interview questions?
Amazon behavioral interview questions are designed to test your fit with the Amazon behaviors that they want you to exhibit in role, as laid out in the Amazon Leadership Principles. Using a list of example Amazon behavioral interview questions, think through your work experience to find strong examples of where you demonstrated the behaviors. Next get comfortable with the STAR framework to structure your answers. STAR stands for Situation (the scenario you found yourself in), the Task (what you had to do), the Action (what you did), and the Result (what happened as a result of your actions). Focus the majority of your answer on the Action and Result sections. Get comfortable answering fluently using the framework by practicing with a partner. Check out a full guide here.
How to prepare for Amazon interview questions?
Prepare to answer Amazon interview questions by practicing using an example question list mapped to the Amazon Leadership Principles. Invest time in understanding a framework to structure your answers such as the STAR framework (Situation, Task, Action, Result). Aim for 5-7 minute long answers focusing on the action you took, and the result you gained, including relevant detail and data. Practice with someone to find where you need to refine your statements. Don’t over practice or learn answers off by rote – you need to sound authentic to the interviewer and to respond appropriately to the question they’re asking you. Check out a full guide here.
What is the Amazon interview process?
For non-fulfilment roles you will be interviewed by the in-house talent team who will screen you for experience and potential to get the job, the hiring manager, members of the team, and an Amazon Bar Raiser. There will be anywhere between 2-7 interviews. These will be 45 minutes to 60 minutes long. The process is known as ‘the loop’. Find a full guide here.
Where can I find an Amazon interview question bank?
You can find 92 sample Amazon interview questions and a full guide to interviewing at Amazon here. Be wary of prepared responses – Amazon looks to understand your work experience and will drill in with detailed questions. Your professional examples should be your own if you want to succeed.
What questions are asked in an Amazon interview?
Amazon uses behavioral interviewing to understand if a candidate is a good organizational and cultural fit for Amazon. Amazon behavioral interview questions often start with Tell me about a time when… but they might cover all sorts of scenarios and contexts. The best way to prepare for Amazon behavioral interview questions ahead of time is to understand Amazon’s leadership principles, map your experience to those principles, and get comfortable answering questions using the STAR method by practicing with an example question bank.
