Five Tips for Your Interview at Amazon - Or Anywhere Else Really

After completing a number of interviews at Amazon and having interviewed and hired candidates in previous roles, I see certain patterns, or rather anti-patterns in interviews, that candidates may not notice themselves or perceive as an issue. Simple things, that require little effort to avoid, but can eventually make the difference when it comes to a hire / no-hire decision. The observations are not specific to Amazon interviews, but our particular style to interviewing using behavioral-based questions, may be a catalyst to expose these patterns. Below is my list of top five simple tips on things to avoid in an interview:

#1 You don’t know about the company that you apply for

When you interview for a job and you take it seriously, you should invest significant time in getting to know the company, its products, culture and latest news. Take the example of AWS. If you want to be up-to-date on the state of the business, new services and customer cases, check out the latest re:Invent keynote for example. Being informed shows your sincere interest in becoming a member of the organization. This also means that using the example of AWS, when you are being asked about services you know or find interesting, you should have an answer to the question.

#2 Talking about your team’s contributions instead of your own

I can much relate to candidate’s hesitation to talk much about themselves and their contributions rather than the team effort that is has gone into projects they have worked on. You may also be scared to come off as not being a team player if you focus solely on your own contributions. But now consider the interviewer who is trying to learn about what you have done, your contributions to projects and get a detailed understanding of how you work and tackle specific situations. If you focus on describing team efforts only, you may leave the interviewer scrambling to determine what your contributions were.

#3 Show your passion

Do get excited! When you are in an interview situation and are able to show your passion, show what you are excited about, and share your emotions. As with any story we tell, the way we do it makes a difference. Especially at the moment, where most interviews are fully virtual, the number of non-verbal cues you receive from a candidate are limited. You can’t see their posture, their gestures and sometimes only their voice and not even their face.

#4 Be humble and self-critical

A risky approach for interviewees is to exaggerate when describing their own contributions. They may exaggerate when it comes to the role they played in a project or organization or the budget they were responsible for. Especially when an interviewer has follow-up questions and dives deep on a certain topic, some of those seemingly harmless lies come to light. Undoubtedly, this will decrease your chances of being hired. You should always be humble and truthful, as you cannot win back someones trust easily once it is lost - especially in a 60 or 90 minute virtual interview.

The second related topic is being self-critical. This is even baked into our Amazon leadership principle “Earn Trust”, where it says that leaders

“[...] are vocally self-critical, even when doing so is awkward or embarrassing.”

When you interview candidates and they describe challenging projects or situations, you may follow-up and ask them about what they had learned from a specific situation. This is not a time to pretend that everything was perfect. It is a time to show self-reflection, where a candidate should be honest and forthcoming about things he or she did wrong in retrospect, how they would act differently today or what they learned from the experience. The ability to self-reflect is crucial, so as a candidate do not shy away from opening up when it comes to talking about things that did not work out.

#5 Ask questions you really want to ask

At the end of each interview, you typically have a few minutes to ask the interviewer questions, about the process, the position, the company or whatever else comes to your mind. I urge any candidate to use this time to ask the questions you they really want to know and not use this time "strategically" in some form or fashion. When you come to an interview you may still have doubts about the job or the company. Try to get information to help you clear up those doubts and help you determine if the organization and role is a good fit for you. If you do not want to travel much, but are not sure if the role permits to do so, ask. If you have an interviewer that is in the department or role that you interview for, ask them about it. Don’t hold back. On the one hand it shows your interest and secondly, gives you confidence to proceed in the hiring process or not.