are critical components of every (full time and internship) interview that Amazon conducts. \u00a0Give them a good read. \u00a0Think about your answers, and how you tackle your questions. Then read them again.<\/span><\/p>\nRegardless of role or seniority, you must incorporate these principles into your responses. \u00a0The reason is simple: when folks at Amazon meet to debrief and discuss your interview feedback, these principles are used as a framework. \u00a0Your responses are evaluated and you are rated based on how well you performed according to the leadership principles. \u00a0As such, often candidates who are otherwise competent and would do very well, may get rejected simply because they did not demonstrate these skills.<\/span><\/p>\nFollowing are 3 key strategies you can employ to ensure this isn’t the reason you are rejected:<\/span><\/p>\n1) Read and internalize the principles: \u00a0The first half of this is obvious. The second – not so much. \u00a0Reading the principles is easy, however if you want to work at Amazon you need to understand that these aren’t just fancy words or a mission statement that many other companies like to put out in a nice press release. \u00a0Amazonians live and breath this stuff and they appear in every aspect of the culture. \u00a0From hiring, to document discussions even to annual reviews, the principles hold a critical place. As such, after reading these, take the time to understand them, to reflect and to think about how you embody (or need to work on) some of these areas. \u00a0This reflection will help significantly when trying to tailor your responses to include them.<\/span><\/p>\n2) Focus on customer: While all of the leadership principles are important, some are more important than others. \u00a0None however are more important than Customer obsession. \u00a0I’ve seen more candidates rejected because of lack of customer focus than any other reason. What’s more, whenever you answer a behavioral question, starting with the customer is a sure fire way to make the interviewer happy (by giving them something to write) and also <\/span>and also give you a structured way to start your response<\/span>. \u00a0In general this is a good thing, but for Amazon interviews it is critical. <\/span><\/p>\n3) Understand this is poker – look for the tell: Every interviewer on the loop has at least one leadership principle they are in charge of evaluating. As such, you should be able to tell pretty quickly (from the kinds of questions you’re being asked) which principle they are evaluating you on. \u00a0Be alert and once you figure it out, make sure in each and every one of your answers you tie in that principle. Make it clear that you excel in the area. \u00a0This will result in this interviewer positioning themselves as an advocate for you in the debrief session simply because you nailed their principle (assuming you don’t bomb the rest of the loop).<\/span><\/p>\nObviously there are a number of other things involved in a loop, but at Amazon in particular you want to make sure that whenever your interviewer is asking you questions, you keep the leadership principles in mind. \u00a0Weaving them into your answers and making sure your responses sound tailored and natural is a bit more of a challenge. Something that comes with practice, preparation and repetition.<\/p>\n
Good luck!<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Amazon interviews – though well documented online – are evaluated in a complex and somewhat unconventional way. \u00a0We get candidates for coaching who have already been turned down by Amazon. These candidates are all well qualified and intelligent. \u00a0They’ve spent time preparing the standard questions types (algorithms, data structures for devs, product design, market sizing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2,3],"class_list":["post-5","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-amazon","tag-leadership"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zenterview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zenterview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zenterview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zenterview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zenterview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.zenterview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.zenterview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5\/revisions\/7"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zenterview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zenterview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zenterview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}