I applied through a recruiter. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon in Sep 2013
Interview
HR reached out via email and then had two 30-min telephonic interviews - mostly behavioral - 'tell me about a time' questions along with a couple situational case questions. Got an update the very next day about being selected for final round interviews at Seattle. Four back to back interviews, again mostly behavioral around previous work ex and a couple of pricing and amazon product related questions
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Cannot provide the exact question (NDA) but it was related to a product strategy for their ongoing product implementation in the international market
2 rounds of phone screen, 1 written evaluation followed by 5 rounds of in-house.
Phone screens typically cover your professional workex and some basic questions and cases on e-commerce.
Make sure you don't bluff and have plenty of examples from your workex on problems you have solved. You MUST come accross as a person who loves to solve problems and not just someone who is told what to do and goes ahead and executes.
The in-house will be a lot more detailed and you will be grilled on
1. Business cases (Eg. pricing of a product)
2. Guesstimate Questions - Size of XYZ market in India?
3. Problem Solving - How will you build a new feature on XYZ site or launch a new category?
4. Detailed drilling down of your workex - Have plenty of examples to show customer obsession, how you solved hard problems and why you did what you did.
5. Standard behavioural questions - What are your professional regrets?
The interview process is hard and the bar is very high but you will enjoy it. The good part is that you will speak to some very smart people and if nothing else, you will enjoy the questions they throw at you.
I applied through college or university. I interviewed at Amazon
Interview
The first contact took place during career fair at my MBA school. Since then I contacted a few alumni working with the company. First interview took place over a telephone with a manager who has been working with the company for 10+ years. I was then invited to an on-site interview loop with four other managers and the HR manager. The interview loop included a simple Excel test.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
There was really no unexpected question. Be sure to know the leadership principles which can be found on the Amazon website, as well all the latest news about the company. They won't ask you about the news, but you may proactively - without being too pushy - throw it into the interview. Adding to that: ask questions about the company, but not the basic ones!