Amazon Offer - Sharing my prep resources

[dragoncore]

Just got the Amazon PM offer. I signed a confidential agreement, so I won’t disclose specific interview questions. Because it is a non-tech PM, 90% of the questions were behavioral. I will share with you more than 100 Qs that I have prepared. All the questions asked are in the list + I added questions I found online. I just registered for the forum, I hope this is helpful for others who are starting to interview.

Interview Progression: phone interview (one round), virtual on site (five rounds, one day)

Preparation process:

1. After getting the interview invite, I researched what the process is and stumbled on Candor. I went to the Office Hour, joined the LI group and direct messaged a few Amazon PMs on the LI group.
2. Next, I watched this series of interview coaching videos on Youtube - look up “Holly Amazon” - she’s a former recruiter who has her own channel. I see there’s a Candor course now but that wasn’t available during my prep.
3. After finishing the above step, I did a mock interview with my friend for practice + did 2 mock interviews in the Candor platform with Niya.
   I then went in for the AMZN phone interview. Because you can read your notes during a telephone interview, it is generally easier than I thought. Niya told me to paste a cheat sheet on the wall behind the camera, which helped me a lot.
4. In the process of preparing for the onsite, I focused on preparing my own 30 stories - I did 2 stories for most LPs. I spent some time doing these in a Google doc + rehearsed these on my own.
5. Before the Onsite interview, I did another mock interview with my friend and watched pretty much all videos in the Candor interview tool.

Interview result: One week after the on site interview, I got the offer. I was so happy!!!

Some tips if you’re now starting:

1. I would do at least 2 stories for each leadership principle - I am mid career but I still benefited from this step.
2. While preparing for the interview, I also found two Amazon employees on LinkedIn to do coffee chats with. They shared some interview tips, which was valuable and reassuring. If you are nervous talking to people, this is a good way to practice as well.
3. During the interview preparation process, there will be a lot of pressure. I practiced for 3 hours every night a for a week and my throat became hoarse after a few days, but the effort was worth it.

Good luck everyone! I tried to summarize but if you still have questions message me here

[lparker]

Helpful! Can you share some of the behavioral questions you got?

[dragoncore]

Here’s some my friend sent me to prep for - mine are included:

1. Tell me about a time you had to make a decision to make short-term sacrifices for long-term gains.
2. Let me about a time when you made mistakes.
3. Tell me about a time when you had to leave a task unfinished.
4. Give me two examples of when you did more than what was required in any job experience.
5. Tell me about a time when you took a calculated risk.
6. Tell me about your proudest professional achievement.
7. Tell me about a time when you had to work with incomplete data or information.
8. Tell me about a time when you influenced a change by only asking questions.
9. Tell me about a time when you invented something.
10. Tell me about a time when you solved a problem through just superior knowledge or observation.
11. Tell me about a time you had to deal with ambiguity.
12. Tell me about a time you had to handle a crisis.
13. Tell me about a time when you had to make a quick decision that was going to have a significant impact on the business.
14. Tell me about a time when you had a group conflict, and how did you overcome this conflict?
15. Tell me about a situation where you directly impacted customer satisfaction.
16. Can you tell me about a time when you were more than halfway through a project and had to pivot quickly due to an unexpected change? How did you handle it?
17. Which leadership principle of Amazon’s do you connect with most?
18. Tell me about a time you faced a crisis at work. How did you handle it?
19. Can you tell me about a time you had to make a fast customer service decision without any guidance? How did you decide what to do?
20. Tell me about a time that you dealt with a hostile customer.
21. When given an unfamiliar task, how do you ensure you handle it properly?
22. If you are given two conflicting priorities from two separate managers, how do you figure out how to proceed?
23. Give me an example of when you received criticism. How did you respond to the information?
24. What metrics do you use to drive positive change?
25. If a supervisor asked you to do something unsafe that went against policy, what would you do?

[lillypod]

@dragoncore how many questions did you get asked by each interviewer?

[platoonroll]

is this same for swe?

[jrome]

niceeeeeee, ty so much

[cinderella92]

i’ve done an interview for ds and some of these were the same for me, so prob swe will get these as well

[dumpling]

if i had to do 2 stories for leadership principle, i wouldn’t be done until next year. seriously though, this is very helpful

[niya]

Thank you for sharing @dragoncore

[bentraft]

This is so helpful! Got an offer from FB for SWE but looking into Amazon PM as well…

[snowmansurfer]

@bentraft interviewing for SWE but might want to make the switch to PM at some point! can i send you a dm to discuss how/why you’re interviewing for both?

[snowmansurfer]

i agree this is super helpful!!

[kirmalla95]

this question list is so helpful! time to practice

[turncatcher]

This is very helpful and I followed a similar process during my interview prep. I shared a bunch of questions too. Check them out here: Amazon PM interview questions

[ch21]

Do you have any negotiation tips?

[dragoncore]

I’d check out Candor’s negotiation guide (https://candor.co/guides/salary-negotiation) or even give them a call. I didn’t personally reach out—just read the article—but my friends have said amazing things about their service.