Suggested by a friend I applied for a Data Engineer position at Amazon, to my surprise I did receive a call from HR within a week. This was my first interview after 4 years. My work experience included Oracle Pl/SQL and Hyperion Essbase, and Amazon was looking for a Data Architect or someone who could do data modeling.
HR had briefed me before about the first interview. This interview was for 45 mins (Started and Ended as scheduled). First 10 Mins were used to introduce Interviewer and Amazon. This was followed with a clear technical interview. I liked the way this person interviewed, it was all technical and he was expecting me to explain how things would work inside a Database. Some Questions on Index, Partitions and tables. This was followed by asking me to design a data mart (May be Hotel booking, Restaurant or something similar). This interview went really good for me and I was expecting a call back from Amazon. As expected I got a call in 3 days and they scheduled one more technical interview based on my free-time which happened 3 days later.
Second technical interview was no different from the first one. Technical Questions were little difficult compared to first and followed by asking for a designing sample data model.
This interview went good too and got a call back from HR in 3 days. This time they asked for a non technical interview with Recruitment team. This was again scheduled for next day based on my availability. Also they asked for details about my availability in travelling to Seattle for a day’s interview.
Explaining the discussion with Recruitment team, it was all about knowing my interests, knowledge about Amazon, explaining Amazon Salary structure, my Salary expectations and explained about how things would look during onsite interview.
I did my research about Onsite interview and tried to collect most details. This information is really hard to get, and the reason behind I writing this document is same.
As everyone would expect I thought It would be behavioral round and just a formality. Its not the case and every minute during this interview is very important.
I spent 18 hrs in travel before landing at Amazon @ 10:20 AM (Late by 20 mins to interview). I was really tired with lot of flight cancellations and couldn’t find time to fresh up. The Recruitment team greeted and did a nice welcome. She spent some 10 mins walking through the building and explaining the work culture there.
This was followed by 30 mins of explaining next 7 hrs schedule and some Questions to understand my knowledge about Amazon. I really don’t remember questions but I guess little bit of search on Google about Amazon would help us there.
Right at 11:00 AM we had a person knocking at the door. HR left wishing me good luck. I didn’t expect that this would be followed by 7 Hours of non-stop questions. I was really not prepared for this 7 hours of talking and white boarding.
I guess I met 8 people in this 7 hours, last hour interview was conducted by 2 people – One asking Questions and other just monitoring.
All the first 6 Interviews were similar and below are some of questions you may expect. End of the hour I always had next person knocking the door. I felt I did pretty good on technical rounds and not so good on behavioral rounds. There is no lunch-break, you will be interviewed even while having food. It’s a real test of your mental strength.
After meeting these 6 ppl, I felt I had hit 5 of the interviews on bulls eye. I was comparing the knowledge level of the interviewer with mine and felt it was going good.
Again on the repetitive Questions of database design and challenges I was getting little annoyed. I was tired after 6:30 Hrs of talking.
Along with technical Questions, I was also asked to answer for reason on job change, Why Amazon, Whats good about Amazon, and lot of them. Questions on my prev roles and myself were minimal and they clearly said ITS WASTE OF TIME. Everyone made it clear they didn’t want to hear storied and expected crisp and simple answers.
All the ppl I meet had atleast 10 years of Database experience, and were heading a team. These were ppl who would be talking to me on daily basis had I been selected.
No mercy, two ppl walked-in for the last round. As I understood they were seniors of the account and lead this whole division. The question here was simple and single. Asked me to design a Database for one of Amazon division which we use everyday on amazon. For 1 Hour I was trying to run away from this Question(I expected there would be one more Question, if I didn’t like it) and they were persistent and trying to dig thought the same concept.
After the interview I expected a negative feedback, and did hear the same. As I understand all 8 ppl did a 60 Mins brainstorming before making this valid decision.
Good luck for all you guys.
