Contacted by Amazon recruiting, poor quality phone calls, multiple contacts, many seemed to be new and poorly organized. Helps to be organized and manage process, with regular followup. Not a problem as this was a management position. Great if you have an amazon contact who can track down what is happening. Did finally talk with a Amazon recruiter who seemed on top of process and one the phone was helpful in describing details and preliminary schedule. The email and other processes were a black box.
Ended up having two online/phone technical interview, the second interviewer was confused why needed a second, hopefully Amazon will figure out their growing pains as they do have a detailed tracking process and are know for data analysis.
For on site interviews, nice people, but disorganized: difficulty finding my primary contact, problems setting up video conference. Three of the interviewers appeared to change at last minute, two of interviews had new employee observers. Two were video conference to Seattle. Be prepared to have phone numbers for your primary recruiting contact, they can help resolve problems on that day. One of the interviewers was waiting in another conference room.
During interviews, everyone very focused on typing what you say into their system. A couple did explain, and even apologized for lack of engagement as they typed. Because of problems mentioned above, most of my interviews were running late and constrained. Most tried to allow some time for questions beyond their behavioral, Amazon principals questions. The one technical interviewer gave less than 15min for technical problem discussion and solution (a fairly typical coding interview problem but challenging for the time). One peer interview left no time for my questions, "needed to get through questions", offered to answer questions via LinkedIn, but never accepted connection. Perhaps already knew thumbs down or was interviewing others first?
Some interviewers provided some feedback re Amazon environment, be sure to ask. You should talk with one long time (3+year) Amazon employee.
After interviews, two weeks before heard decision. Three different Amazon contacts for recruiting, was never perfectly clear who would respond, so helps to include all with your email. Vague timelines when team might decide. As with many high tech interview processes, no information about why. Throughout process got a number of apologies, so I'm convinced it wasn't some type of torture test. Hopefully this experience is an outlier, and more an indication of the growing pains at Amazon. Ultimately, heard they had decided to not move forward, with a "really impressed with your qualifications, please stay in touch!" however…
Important note: Amazon said they have a 12 month "cooling off" period. They will *not* consider you for other openings. If you are going though the process and it looks like it isn't a fit, you might see if you can decline them before they block you from other openings. Alternatively, I've heard that multiple Amazon applications and interviews can happen around the same time. They work internally to decide which is the best fit. My error, I applied to this one job first, and didn't apply to others until later, apparently I won't hear back.
