Register for Amazon Career Day, a free event on Thursday, 16th September, 2021 at 9:30am BST. This interactive experience is for all job seekers, regardless of your level of experience, professional field, or background – whether you are interested in working at Amazon or elsewhere.
Quick—how many sides does a circle have? How do you lift an elephant with one hand? And what was the prime ministers name in 1992? If youre gearing up for an interview, you might think you need to prepare for trick questions like these. At Amazon, thats not the case. Though tech companies have a reputation for throwing out brain teasers during the interview process, we do things a bit differently here.
“We want to help candidates put their best foot forward,” said Stacy Milgate, Senior Client Lead, Amazon Web Services. “Our interview process is geared toward finding true examples of the work youve performed.”
Our candidate-first approach to interviewing means well do our best to ask fair questions and provide tools and resources to help you. However, its still important to do your research and prep work.
If youre ready to get started, here are 11 tips to prepare for your upcoming interview with Amazon.
Describe your most difficult customer and how you handled it.
Amazon is known for their customer service. If the position youre interviewing for is a customer-facing position, then you can count on a question similar to this. When answering this question, apply the STAR method:
Once, I encountered a repeat customer who was upset that an item he ordered was delayed. It was scheduled to arrive within five days of him ordering it, but due to backlog issues with the supplier, the delivery time was adjusted to be 30 days out. The item was an anniversary gift for his wife, and the anniversary was less than two weeks away.
Obviously, the 30 days would not work for him, and he was close to irate about the situation. I needed to figure out a way to help him receive the anniversary gift on time. I first contacted the supplier to see if there was any way to expedite the order, but the best they could do was get the item to him a couple of days earlier than the revised scheduled arrival date.
So, I then worked with the customer to identify a different supplier that sold an almost identical item. I offered him expedited shipping at no charge, so he would receive the item within three days, and that timing worked for his anniversary date. I also offered him a 20 percent coupon towards his next purchase. He was pleased with the outcome, and he remained a loyal customer.
Tell me about a time you were 75 percent through a project and had to pivot quickly. How did you handle it?
Life happens when we are in the middle of projects, and Amazon leadership will want to know how you handle these types of situations when they occur. You could encounter this question for many different types of roles, including technical and management positions. Your answer should speak to your agility, leadership, and problem-solving skills:
At my last job, I was leading a project that was near completion. Everything was moving smoothly and on-target for timely completion. Then, one of our partners providing one of the software upgrades that were to occur at the 90 percent mark encountered a breach of their systems and was estimated to delay the project by two to four weeks.
I had to review our plans and come up with options to keep the project on target as much as possible. Going with another software provider wasnt a viable option, as the groundwork had been laid to go live with the current provider, and starting over would have delayed the project even more. Instead, we were able to allocate two resources to support the provider in recovering from the breach in less than half of the time that was projected.
As a result, we were able to complete the project only two days after the originally scheduled completion date. Fortunately, since we had built in a cushion for contingencies, we were able to go live on schedule.
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 customer’s situation. While talking about a mistake isn’t easy, following up with how you used the experience to grow and develop can showcase you as a strong candidate.
EXAMPLE ANSWER: