After applying online - Initial contact by the recruiter followed by 2 behavioral phone screens from peers. The recruiting coordinator was courteous and followed up consistently to ensure I received updates. Called for on-site after over a month. Onsite was a reflection of what to expect from the company. Interview was not optimally scheduled- they scheduled an interview to begin at noon up to 4 pm, with the note that lunch will not be provided. Essentially, Amazon expected someone to start an interview at noon ( for which someone would have to leave at least an hour ahead to get into the middle of Cambridge and take back to back absolutely vocal interviews, with 6 people in intervals of 45 mins( all of which ran overtime), without any food. To their credit, they did offer me water and coffee and a supervised restroom break. Questions were not technical, but behavioral, most of which seemed repetitive. They make you sign an NDA. They don't provide any specific details about the role. The job description was very generic- when you'd ask a question, they'd give a beat around the bush answer but they would want very specific answers with examples to their questions. Why would you expect someone to give you specific details about their work if you are not willing to provide information about the job or questions you are asking. I had an interviewer who is a research scientist and that interview was totally scattered all over the place with no coherence in the questions asked or responses to my questions. By the middle of the interview with this person, I felt like we were 5-6 questions away from the original question. All 6 interviewers gave the same answer to my question about work life balance at Amazon as though they were trained to answer that question. They even used the same words in a sentence. Now isn't that a co-incidence?
At the end of the interview- I felt exhausted. When I reached home, I immediately went to bed, because of the fatigue.
On the positives, they did close the loop on the interview within 3 business days to let me know that they were not pursuing my candidacy, which is a rare thing these days with recruiters.
