Amazon Retail Interview

Hello everyone, friends. Today I will share with you the experiences I gained from my job interview with Amazon.

Like every engineer, I also had a career goal at Amazon. In this direction, I applied to many positions and finally received an interview invitation from one application. This was very exciting for me. Because even if the interview didn't result positively, experiencing such an organized interview process added a lot to me. First of all, I should mention that although my field is software development, I also applied to job postings outside my field at Amazon. One of these was the Graduate Retail program. It was a position opened mostly for new graduates and less experienced candidates. I received an email a long time after my application. This email stated that my application was suitable for evaluation and that I needed to confirm my participation in the online interview. I was given a date and asked which hours would be suitable for a 3-hour meeting on this date. From what I researched, many candidates first go through a phone interview, but I was called directly to the online interview without this stage being deemed necessary. In Amazon interviews, regardless of which country you apply from, the interviews are conducted in English with Amazon officials from various countries. Also, the interview stages and content were mentioned in the email. The interview was planned in 3 stages, the first being 60 minutes, the following ones 45 minutes each. I joined the interviews with Amazon Chime, which is Amazon's own application. They provide the necessary link and information via email.

When the meeting time came, I first conducted a technical interview with an official from the USA. He sent me an Excel file in the style of a product catalog and a PowerPoint presentation explaining the situation and the solution I needed to find. I was asked to read, analyze the document and make some calculations in a 30-minute period. The Excel file contained personal care products and their prices under some special headings. I was also asked to prepare a discounted package special for Black Friday days and make calculations according to the profit margin they determined. To be able to do these, it was necessary to have command of financial information and Excel functions. When the time was up, I made my presentation and after this case study, he asked me a question. His questions ended and then he said I could ask any questions I wanted. We completed the first session this way. Immediately afterwards, I moved to the second session. In the second session, I spoke with an official from Germany. This session also lasted almost 1 hour and was only in question and answer format. Just before the session ended, I was asked to direct questions to him and it ended this way. The third session lasted about half an hour and they asked a few questions here too and asked me to direct questions in the same way. All sessions ended this way and about 2 days later I received an email saying they would not continue with me.

As far as I remember, the questions they asked me were as follows;

• Tell me about a difficulty you encountered in your work life and how you overcame this difficulty.
• Tell me about a customer who challenged you a lot and how you dealt with this customer.
• What did you do when you needed to use something you didn't know in your job?
• How did you manage a project with very little time left until the delivery deadline?

These are the questions I remember for now. They asked many more questions like these, I will update as I remember. But I must mention that when I researched Amazon interview questions on the internet, they were almost the same as the questions I encountered. The questions asked are related to Amazon's leadership principles. They have determined a list of principles and expect every employee to work with these principles. The answers they want to the questions are also related to these principles. Also, Amazon has determined a strategy for itself. When conveying questions to interviewers, they expect an answer using their own methods. The name of this methodology is STAR. That is, Situation-Task-Action-Result. This method was emphasized many times in the email I received the interview invitation. You should also pay attention to these in your interviews with Amazon.

As a result, it was a very exciting and special interview for me. Even though it didn't result positively, seeing and getting to know the structure of such big companies and communicating with visionary people was a very nice experience.

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