"There is no clear rubric for what type of answer ‘meets or raises the bar.' The evaluation is subjective, and it relies on the interviewer's interpretation of the problem and solution."interviewing.io interviewer from AmazonAlthough you might find this degree of uncertainty intimidating, we'll show you how you can actually use this uncertainty to your advantage and score additional points during your interview.
"25% of SDEs who pass the technical bar are disqualified due to behavioral concerns."interviewing.io interviewer from Amazon
"I wish more candidates would prepare well in advance for our behavioral questions. I wish they knew the questions' patterns and were prepared to speak about their experience in an effective way."interviewing.io interviewer from Amazon
"When talking about your projects, most of your words should be about ‘I' not ‘We.' Your answer should mainly be about your individual contribution."interviewing.io interviewer from AmazonAccording to our research, the third most common reason engineers fail interviews is a lack of focus on their individual contributions when discussing their work history. Typical feedback from interviewers looked like this: “I got an understanding of what the project was about and what work was involved in general, but I couldn't really get a sense of what you did.”
"It's better to share no example than a bar-lowering example. For instance, if the interviewer asks you to share a time you ‘Insisted on the Highest Standards,' and you talk about code formatting one source file, that is almost definitely a negative mark against you. It would be better to share nothing at all."interviewing.io interviewer from Amazon
"Hey, I don't agree. And I don't agree for these reasons. I think it's not going to work. However, for the sake of getting the work done, I'm on board. And down the road, if things aren't going as planned, then we can circle back and revisit this discussion."
EXAMPLE:"In my current role, a conflict occurred over choosing how to integrate a third-party software. The conflict was: my manager and I couldn't agree on an approach."RULE #2Make sure the topic of a conflict is relevant to your level.A topic relevant to a junior engineer is something like choosing variable names. For senior engineers, it'd be about something more significant such as deciding how to design the architecture or choosing one database over another.RULE #3Choose actual conflicts, not potential conflicts.A conflict is a disagreement drawn out over time. If there wasn't much discussion about it or time didn't pass while it persisted, then it probably wasn't a conflict. If this is the case, it was more of a “potential conflict that got resolved quickly.” If it wasn't a conflict, then don't position it as one.
EXAMPLE:"One conflict I had with my manager was about integrating a third-party API. They thought this service would improve performance. My research showed it improved performance marginally but complicated maintenance significantly. After gaining support from the team lead, I walked my manager through the data flows. They weren't convinced; however, they were more open to the idea. At the urging of myself and the team lead, the manager took it to one of their stakeholders who agreed that the long-term maintenance costs were too high to justify using this service. This led to us not integrating the third-party service that had been proposed."
Question from the candidate:"Let's say you have a user who used to use the Alexa services when they were a new user, but now they don't use the Alexa services anymore. How do you collect the data to understand what went wrong, so you can improve user experience? Most users are going to ignore surveys, so how do you learn about stuff like what features they didn't like?"By framing it around user experience, this question broadcasts customer obsession. It's crucial to take advantage of every opportunity to broadcast signal, so don't ignore the importance of asking questions in a strategic way.
"Interviewers may spend 10-15 minutes on a single point, asking multiple follow-up questions and going deep into the point."interviewing.io interviewer from Amazon
Book mock interviews with engineers from Google, Facebook, Amazon, or other top companies. Get detailed feedback on exactly what you need to work on. Everything is fully anonymous.