10 Mistakes To Avoid During The Amazon Interview

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This article is a summary of this video from Dan.

In today’s competitive job market, landing an interview with a top company like Amazon can be a huge opportunity for job seekers. However, the Amazon interview process is unique and requires preparation and knowledge of the company’s values and leadership principles. Making mistakes during the interview process can hinder your chances of success.

Dan highlights some of the most common mistakes made by candidates and provides tips on how to avoid them.

Mistake #1

One of the primary mistakes that candidates make is not being prepared to answer behavioral questions. Behavioral questions are designed to evaluate how candidates react to specific situations and demonstrate their problem-solving skills. Candidates who are unprepared for these questions may struggle to provide thoughtful answers and could be eliminated from the hiring process.

Mistake #2

Another common mistake made by candidates is not providing specific examples to back up their answers. Amazon values candidates who can demonstrate their experiences and accomplishments through specific examples. Candidates who fail to provide these examples may be perceived as unprepared or lacking the necessary experience for the role.

Other mistakes:

Candidates who do not demonstrate their inventiveness and ability to think big also risk being eliminated from the interview process. Amazon values employees who can think outside of the box and bring innovative solutions to the table. Candidates who do not demonstrate this ability may be seen as unable to meet the company’s high standards for innovation and creativity.

Not asking questions to the interviewer can also be a mistake. Asking questions shows that candidates have a genuine interest in the company and the role. It also provides an opportunity to learn more about the company’s culture, values, and expectations. Candidates who do not ask questions may appear disinterested or uninformed.

By following the tips and advice in the article, candidates can increase their chances of success in the interview process and take advantage of this incredible opportunity.

I’ve been doing some research using online resources, my previous experience, but also by simply asking people that are applying for a job at Amazon. What are the most interesting points that they wish they knew before interviewing at Amazon? And next, I’m going to present you with the ten most interesting aspects that you could improve while preparing for the Amazon interview.

Now, this may sound like an obvious one, but believe me, this happens all the time. And in fact, it’s not all that hard to picture yourself with five people in front of you that are tasked to ask you difficult questions. It’s only normal that you sometimes get stuck. Now, what can you do about it? Well, for me in the first place, don’t even think about asking them for another question or not ever think about the possibility of not being able to answer this question. Because put it like this, they are the customers, so you should show customer obsession into all this. And furthermore, this includes the scenario if they ask for some failure story, but you’re a recent graduate with no previous work experience. And even if they ask you for your latest innovation, but you don’t want to spill the beans, there is always a way to adapt to a given situation.

and this is the key here one of the most common reactions after being asked a tough question is to stay quiet and I don’t mean to stay quiet for two or three seconds but to stay quiet for half a minute or even one minute or even to ask a recruiter for two minutes break to think for for an answer now a better approach here would be to simply start thinking out loud about an answer to this question or maybe if if the question was not clear enough maybe just ask some follow-up questions or the idea is to start brainstorming immediately and the reason why I’m saying this because the recruiters and goal is is a lot more in understanding how you approach the challenge represented by that question then in in the answer itself so remember that your goal here is to put up a great show and the more breaks you you insert there the less dressed probability that it will sound nice just just like with this video you’ll probably know about Amazon’s 14 leadership principles and you probably even expect to be asked a few questions about these principles during the interview but what not many people realize that Amazon is all about these principles so you should really know them like the back of your hand and even if you don’t memorize memorize them I’d say a good plan here would be to simply prepare stories for each of these four team leadership principles because this is also a great strategy to have an answer for pretty much any question like most companies Amazon uses behavioral interviewing to assess how people react to different circumstances now there are many people that assume that simply knowing about the star method this is enough to get ready for for this type of question when in fact behavioral interviewing is is best prepared to practice it is all about the stories that you prepare for the 14 leadership principles and it is all about practicing to answer the most common behavioral questions and you can even have more than one answer for those most common behavioral questions so even if it may sound like a lot this is pretty much all that that it is to the behavioural part of the Amazon interview now this one may be a bit in contrast to the with the behavioral interviewing part but it basically refers to people that end up watching Jeff Bezos talking about Amazon’s culture for hours and so to be clear here the most important part of the Amazon interview is testing for for your know-how the most important thing you could ever do to prepare for any interviews to know your role to be well prepared for that role and this is especially true for for the AWS interview talking about failure is tough and this particularly true for younger people that also have a reaction of making it sound like it wasn’t that bad when in fact is a mistake actually because your your interviewers and goal is to evaluate your critical thinking and your ability to communicate now how do you get prepared for for this failure story well it’s pretty straightforward you should prepare a failure story in advance and furthermore you should try to avoid putting yourself in in a extremely negative position here and instead you could also try to focus more on on the learnings from from that situation now the setup for the on-site interview is quite clear there will be multiple people asking you tough questions and follow-up question with with the main goal of Amazon avoiding hiring BS artists now I’ve heard this from from other people myself and I believe it’s it’s a great strategy if you don’t feel like you’re gonna be able to put to put up a great show and to have a clear mind for for the on-site interview you could try to reschedule it for for another time so it’s not by accident that one of Amazon’s leadership principles is to dive deep because during the on-site interview for instance one of one of the main goals of those interviewers is to understand very well how how you think and to to ask as many follow-up questions as possible because their end goal is to avoid hiring BS artists so one good piece of advice here would be to spend time to to remember everything that you mentioned all the projects that you talked about in your CV because when being asks such a question you should you should focus on on answering the question efficiently you should focus on the communication side of things rather to spend a few seconds on trying to remember more details about that given scenario this one is actually a recommendation coming from from more than one Amazon recruiters and it’s pretty straightforward to understand but I’ll just say this when when evaluating the way that you’re going to react and to answer some questions also consider that the recruiter that recruiter that you’re talking to is also interviewing hundreds and probably thousands of other people so they are really good at what they’re doing and not only that but you’ll be intervening with many people during the interview so probably you’re your initial choice of whether to go to be yourself or to play someone else’s role there would have to be consistent throughout the interviewing process and finally let me give you three rather classic pieces of advice when it comes to your resume the first one is to really focus on your strengths and on your accomplishments and show curiosity in your CV the second one is to avoid name dropping your position title on your resume for instance if you worked for Google or the New York Times that might be impressive but does not tell the recruiter a whole lot about yourself so instead try to focus on communicating what you’ve done in the position quite clearly for instance you helped drew revenue by five hundred percent for a Pierre for a period of one year to five million dollars instead of just saying that you helped to grow revenue and finally while this will not disqualify you from from the interview typos will start to play a negative role told this and believe me when I say that this happens a lot more often that many people realize so you can see here that nothing is rocket science from from this advice and in fact some of them are pretty easy fixes so hopefully you found them useful for for your interview at Amazon and thank you very much for watching

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Auth 101 Intro to Behavioural Interviews
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