I applied online. The process took 1 week. I interviewed at Amazon in Nov 2013
Interview
Applied via website. The first response was within a few days from the HR people. This was followed by several emails to set up a technical phone interview. This occurred within a week, and was from a technical manager in the Seattle area. The entire phone interview process took about 45 minutes. I did not get an offer, and the response was fairly fast -- within 2 days of the phone interview.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
The phone interview began with a general discussion about the position, the company (Amazon), and my background. This was followed with a test question, asking what would I do if you was in charge of a web-based e-commerce company selling shoes online. In this hypothetical scenario, the marketing dept ran an ad for a few products offering 2-for-1. The website had slowed to a crawl, but overnight had returned to normal. What would I do?
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 1+ week. I interviewed at Amazon
Interview
I was solicited out of the blue by a call from Amazon. I was contacted by email by one recruiter who redirected me to another recruiter once I showed interest. I had a phone interview with this second recruiter to discuss the typical stuff of what I was currently doing, about the job, and why I would be interested. He then routed me to a third recruiter who handled the scheduling of the technical phone interview. I was interviewed by a developer on the team I believe. I was interviewing for a manager spot so most of the questioning was more theoretical, but we did get into some of the details of programming.