I applied online. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in Aug 2019
Interview
Interview process was very lengthy and at times interviewers were very hostile. I had applied for a manager position. A recruiter contacted me and set up a phone screen. The person interviewing told me that I have lot more experience than the position requires and if I would be interested in senior manager role in another group. I agreed to that so he set up another phone screen. When that went well, I was asked to come for on site interview and before that I had to submit answers to some written questions .
The in-person interview lasted almost till 4 PM from morning 9 AM. To my surprise some of the interviewers were not very technical developers but more of lab manager types and didn't have as deep technical knowledge to understand or appreciate the work I had done in the past. All most all of them asked very similar questions. In one case two interviewers came to interview me at the same time and one of them was very intentionally hostile to me and another was rather calm. This was very surprising to me because I have nearly 30 years of industry experience and lot of that at a senior management or executive level. I have interviewed many people in the past and have seen or heard others interview candidates but never saw or heard any company treat potential candidates in hostile way like Amazon does. I can understand if someone disagrees with my views of the management style or past decisions I took etc but there is no way I am going to insult anyone during interview process because I disagreed with their management philosophy or decision making. It shows this is a very bad company to work for
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Lot of questions about past project/management decisions. Hire, fire related questions. Questions about mistakes made in the past etc.
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon (Dublin, Dublin)
Interview
Most likely talked to a terribly disgruntled recruiter. She literally spent 45 minutes on the phone to make me withdraw my application while it was way above her current team's qualifications according to LinkedIn. The call basically was about why with all the impeccable qualifications that she had to admit, I shouldn't pursue the process without even a phone screen. She explained how the climate was so horrible in Dublin, how much I should hate it, how groceries were as expensive as in London, how real estate had become as expensive as in London, how this role will be all after hours while it was not, why I should not travel, why my kids shouldn't go to school over there, how their taxes were so high ...funny when I paused her to share that our tax rates were actually higher at home she quickly she mumbled "well...." and turned to another reason not to consider AWS in Dublin as though she had a list of reasons prepared to bump qualified candidates...and her negative rants went on for ~45 minutes. I left the call rattled and literally sick to my stomach while wondering if one despised their employer or the hiring manager so much why would she still stay with them and convey the grudge to external candidates? Extremely bizarre conversation. On the positive side, I learned about 51 reasons not to work for AWS in Dublin first hand from their own "hiring" staff.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
When our taxes are higher than yours why are you still interested in this role?
I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon (London, England) in Sep 2020
Interview
1st interview is based on two pre defined questions that not necessarily are related to the job/role applied for. This time could have been better spent for both parties if used to understand aplicastes experience and not only a predetermined set of questions
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Description of how to solve/influence a conflict resolution