Amazon Vendor Manager interview questions

Started with the 1st of two phone interviews. The 1st phone interview was about 40 minutes. Pretty standard questions about your resume and situations/tasks you've had in your prior positions. About two days later I received a call from the recruiter who set up the 1st interview. The recruiter was very disorganized. She actually thought she was calling me for the first time and I had to remind her that we spoke a couple times before and that it was her that set up my 1st phone interview. The 2nd interview was an extension of the 1st phone interview. "Explain your answers thoroughly. STAR approach to answering the questions will help you". A week or so went by without any word back from Amazon and then I received an e-mail from the recruiter who I'd been in communication (poor) with throughout the process. After replying to the e-mail and not receiving a confirmation, I finally received a confirmation for the "face-to-face" interview(s). The "face-to-face" interview lasted almost 5 hours. I was rotated from one interviewer to the next. Each last about 45 minutes. The questioning was very similar to the phone interviews, but they will throw at you an interviewer who is NOT from the team for the position that you're interviewing for...known as the "Bar Raiser". You may have heard of various differing past stories about the Bar Raiser. My experience with the B.R. was a pleasant one. Once again, understand the STAR technique to answering questions and you should be fine. The interviewer's are a little quirky, socially delayed (they were most likely the last ones picked on the play ground for teams), and they just stare at you at the completion to answering their questions. Don’t be thrown off your game, be confident in your answers, don’t doubt yourself…it’s them not you. As for the work environment, it was VERY casual...looked like the employees just "rolled out of bed and went to work in their PJ's" : )

The interview process consisted of two phone screens and one in-person. Interviewing with a company such as Amazon is a good experience to have in your interviewing process. They are very structured and calculated in the way they do things. They have classic case study questions, have you work out a problem on a white board, and really try to put you on the spot with questions to see how you react. The one thing that I found odd: they kept emphasizing they only interview, and especially only hire, the best of the best. I found this odd, because during my in-person day of interviewing, most of the interviewers were certainly not in that category. The hiring manager and her boss were bright and enthusiastic, but there were three specific people that were: frumpy, uninspired, and just not the sharpest tools in the shed. They must not have had that motto of hiring the best of the best when these people were brought on board. They were also very clear that no matter where you are in your career, you basically start over at Amazon, just like you are out of college again. Not a good fit for me, but maybe for someone switching careers or out of work. Don't leave your successful career for one there. All-in-all, a nice to see how they work internally.