Amazon Behavioral interview questions

One general advice first - don’t try to game the interview. I mean, by all means, prepare for the interview, but don’t try to tell interviewers what you think they might want to hear. That’s typically a bad idea because interviewers are cunning people and will squeeze the truth out of you if you try to sell them a pleasant-sounding story.

Okay, so that sounds scary, but it isn’t, really, so don’t be scared. Before anything else, let me assure you that scoring well in LP’s is definitely not the most important thing for interns, as we expect your coding skills to be on point, but your leadership principles will get cultivated and grow as you progress through SDE1 to SDE2 to SDE3 and beyond. So, while they are super-important for SDE3 interviews, they are not as important in Intern interviews. Not irrelevant, but not super-imporant.

The point of Amazon Leadership Principles is to distinguish between people who are go-getters, selfless givers, hungry learners, creators, mentors and inventors, from people who sit on their behinds, following orders and doing just barely as much as necessary to get by, without a natural inclination to teach and help others.

So, of course, one cannot expect such a complex of super-positive traits from someone who has barely finished school, yet, as they also take time and experience to develop.

However, we will try to look for that small seed of those traits and look for your potential to grow.

So, I suggest you read up a little bit on those Leadership Principles. You’ll see - they are not just some corporate kool-aid that you ingest and parrot out. They are recipes for how to be an awesome professional and Amazonians try really hard to live by them and perpetuate and spread that unique culture.

Once you’ve read about the Leadership Principles, try to think about each and every one of them. Try to think of a situation in which a person’s reaction would demonstrate this principle, then think of a situation in which a person’s reaction shows quite the opposite. Then, think of situations in your life which demonstrate some of that. Think how you might have applied the thinking that aligns with leadership principles well, without even knowing that somewhere, someone coined a name for that type of thinking.

Finally, don’t invent situations that didn’t happen. It is perfectly legitimate to answer that you have not experienced a situation which could serve as a good answer to your interviewer’s question. That is fine - interviewers are mindful that you do not have a rich and fruitful career behind you. That being said - they want you to have a rich and fruitful career in Amazon, but they need to see potential, and you are to show that potential. Work hard and your work will speak for itself.