Área Manager applicants have rated the interview process at Amazon with 4 out of 5 (where 5 is the highest level of difficulty) and assessed their interview experience as 100% positive. To compare, the company-average is 61.5% positive. This is according to Glassdoor user ratings.
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I applied through a recruiter. The process took 4 months. I interviewed at Amazon (Hazleton, PA) in Apr 2010
Interview
I reached out to a Recruiter through Linkedin back in January about an Area Manager position with Amazon. He responded to me quickly and told me someone would be in touch with me within the next week for a phone screening. A week later a Recruiter called me and we had a brief phone conversation. He said he would like to call me in a month to discuss opportunities. A month later we spoke again for about 5 minutes and he told me he would like to speak with me a month later. After about 3 or 4 phone calls I finally had a 30 minute phone interview with a Senior Operations Manager at the Hazleton, PA location in March. He told me he wanted to have me fly down to Hazleton for an interview. It took about another month for me to get a face to face interview. This is the most stressful interview process I have ever been through. Before you even travel for the interview they e-mail you 4 case studies to do and then you have to e-mail them to the Recruiter. When you go to the location they have you work on a throughput math problem (you should probably study up on it). After that you go on a tour of the Distribution Center and then have a panel interview with 3 managers and yourself. Talk about a grilling!! You have to go over your answer on a whiteboard. On top of that they come up with another alternative you have to figure out. After that you have to explain a couple of your case study answers. This was my least favorite part of the process. Afer that I met with an HR Manager and another GM and had a 2 on 1 interview with them which lasted about 30 minutes. This concluded the interview process which took 3 hours total. I honestly felt stupid when I left the interview which is not a good feeling to have. I have been on a lot of interviews in my life and this was by far the most difficult. They do a lot of recruiting out of the military so a lot of the guys who work here tend to be pretty serious. It was an interesting interview process but I don't expect an offer to come out of it since I feel I did a poor job during the interview process.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Math Problem: You have an upstream Picking department that feeds two downstream packing departments: A and B.
75% of your Pick volume goes to department A, which has a packing rate of 150 unites per labor hour (uph).
25% of the Pick volume goes to department B, which is for large items, and has a pack rate of 25 units per labor hour.
Your pickers pick both large and small items throughout the day at an overall average rate of 100 units per labor hour.
You have 25 people today for all 3 departments, and you absolutely must pack 7,500 units in department A to meet a customer promise metric. How do you allocate labor to balance the flow in your department if you work a 10 hour shift? Do not assume breaks or lunches in your answer.
Department % of volume Rate (uph) People Daily Volume
Pick 100% 100 ?? ??
Pack A 75% 150 ?? 7,500
Pack B 25% 25 ?? ??
The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon in Jan 2010
Interview
I had 3 phone interviews and 1 onsite interview. The first phone interview was with a recruiting manage, whose responsibility was to introduce me to the position including locations, compensation and likely hours. This only lasted about 30 minutes and was a breeze to get through. All you need to do is demonstrate that you understand how important customer experience is to Amazon.com's business and that you have some sense of how their operations work. The second phone interview was also a snap, I spoke with an Operations Manager at the facility I would likely work at. The Operations Manager is the direct report for the Area Managers. In this interview, it was critical to be able to point to specific examples in my career where I demonstrated a commitment to customer service, employee safety, process improvement and leadership. The third interview is the same, only with the Site Manager.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
You have 2 employees, Jim, who is new and doesn't seem to follow the SOP and constantly makes errors and Jane, who is a seasoned veteran, also does not follow the SOP, but rarely makes errors. How would you address with each employee the fact that he/she does not follow the SOP?
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 4 months. I interviewed at Amazon in Sep 2009
Interview
Conducted an initial phone screen with a recruiter who found my resume and contacted me. At first I was not interested, but then did a follow-up with the recruiter to discuss taking the application process further. What followed were a couple of additional phone screens with HR and then an upper level manager. That was followed by a face-to-face interview on site - they paid for my travel. The on-site interview consisted of a word problem (they call it a math problem), a questionnaire of scenarios (completed prior to the interview), a tour and a panel interview. While the interview appeared to go well I grew concerned that the facility was actually overstaffed in terms of managers and that I was overqualified for the position. The interview was concluded with a promise of an answer in 7 days. As promised, on day 7 I got the thanks but no thanks email. Of course, no information about why I wasn't selected, just that they were going with another candidate.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
In a 10 hour shift, how will you staff to achieve a goal of sending out 7500 packages. More info was provided re: the labor hours, laborer productivity, etc.