Amazon Web Services (AWS) Interview Process Breakdown
Intro
Hello, 🌎! Yesterday, Auguest 1st, 2022, at 5:22 PM, I received an email from Amazon with the subject, “Congratulations!!! AWS Offer.” I jumped up and ran across my apartment several times with my dog Emma screaming, “WE DID IT.” I then proceeded to call my mom and dad and of course, initially told them that I didn’t get the job before giving them the truth and listening to them get emotional. I savoured the feeling of accomplishment for as long as I could before slowly humbling myself as my father always taught me. With that said, I wanted to provide a high-level break down of Amazon’s interview process, so that’s what this blog post will be about. Let’s go for it!
Initial Phone Call
Amazon’s initial phone call was pretty chill and was mostly focused on getting to know me, why I was interested in this role, and what my initial salary expectations were. This is also the call in which the recruiter speaks about Amazon and introduces Amazon’s leadership principles which will be essential for the remaining interviews.
Phone Screen
The phone screen was compromised of both behavioral and technical questions and was with a single Amazonian. Personally, I believe this was my best interview performance and really put my foot in the door.
Call with Lead Recruiter
The call with the lead recruiter was VERY helpful because this call actually provided me with some information regarding the final virtual interviews. This included specific leadership principles to focus on in addition to technical topics that I would be evaulated on. There was also some time to talk about relocation and salary. This call occured 2 days prior to my final interview date.
Virtual Interview
I barely slept because of the anxiety I had the night before so I woke up several hours before the scheduled time of my interview and did some more technical and behavioral interview preparation. The final interview round consisted of 4 individual interviews: two interviews were completely focused on asking behavioral questions and the other two were dedicated to testing my technical knowledge. In my opinion, the behavioral interviews were the toughest so if you are interviewing for Amazon, I’d strongly recommend putting together a list of experiences to talk about during these interview sessions because repeating the same experiences to 2 interviewer’s won’t work. In fact, if you try to use the same experience twice, the interviewer will mostly likely ask you to use a different experience to answer the question.
Offer
Approximately, 2 business days after my virtual interviews of the final round, I received the offer from AWS. The offer was so good that I didn’t even bother to negotiate (Yeehaw!!). I also received a follow up call from my recruiter who told me that I did an excellent job during all my Amazon interviews which was awesome to hear.
Advice
Master Amazon’s leadership principles and really focus on the topics mentioned in the jobs description. Good luck to those who are or plan on interviewing with Amazon.
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