Working at Amazon is the dream of many competitive and competent individuals. However, dreams can only become reality through proper planning and due diligence to back them up. You cannot expect a dream job to land in your lap without making specific efforts for it. Through this blog article, our goal is to help you plan the first step towards landing your dream job: making a stellar resume. Many people neglect the importance of a resume for their personal branding, and often copy/paste the same file for multiple jobs. For a company like Amazon, such lax behavior will not get you anywhere. Your sloppy mistakes will be caught and cause your rejection.
If you follow my simplified star method for resume making and beware of the following biggest mistake to avoid on resumes, you will get your foot in the door and land yourself an interview at Amazon!
Don’t call yourself an EXPERT
More than once, you must have experienced people calling themselves an expert in a certain skill or field. You might have done that yourself, thinking that is how you can best address yourself after all the experience you have accumulated. However, I am here to tell you to not use the word expert for yourself.
Personal branding is about telling a story about yourself. A story that represents you, your values, your struggles, and your ambitions. The word expert, however, can rub people off the wrong way. You will come off as obnoxious or haughty in the worst-case scenario.
For example, if the recruiter has worked as a recruiting manager and a leader in reputable companies for a solid decade, they will expect the person who calls themselves an expert to truly live up to that word. However, that word implies an infallible genius, which no person can live up to. If you make one mistake, for example, an automation ‘expert’ makes an error in python coding, their authenticity is voided by their self-labeled claim of expertise. You might also be expected to be all-rounded, and be able a hard deliverable in itself. Don’t call yourself a product expert if you have experience in only one step of the product’s life cycle. Don’t call yourself a product expert if you have experience in only one step of the product’s life cycle.
Even more so, the word expert implies a stable, strong grasp and experience in the field of said expertise. I find people who claim to have 15 to 18 years of experience in a field to have jumped multiple jobs, have time lapse between work in that field, have not worked on a large-scale project in that field, have never led a project from the ground-up, have always worked under supervision, or have never had any global experience in that field. Such a person may have the aggregate years in that field down, but they do not skillfully qualify for an expert.
If you are calling yourself an expert AWS cloud, then you better live up to your claim down to the tiniest detail about AWS cloud infrastructure. Hence, the title of expert should be earned rather than self-proclaimed.
The STAR method for resumes and interviews
Remember that your resume is the most comprehensive information the recruiter has about you. Your resume is your personal brand, and what words you use in it define you as a person and as an employee. You must be mindful of this while applying to Amazon.
Your resume is also the document that will determine the direction your interview will go to. You would have to explain what you have written in your resume. However, before you reach that stage, you should ask yourself why you are working in your particular field? For the paycheck or the passion for the subject? Depending on your answer, your resume and interview might differ a lot. People working for a paycheck might get nervous and not answer as comprehensively as needed. While passionate folks tend to go on and on about a topic.
Since it all boils down to your personal branding, the star method is the most ideal method to stay both concise and comprehensive. You take the situation, present the task, explain the action you took, and demonstrate the results. Through this method, you stay in the highlight, and the story is wrapped up in a neat bow. Use this method to both, draft the experiences you mention on your resume, and answer any questions recruiters ask during your interview. Stay to the point on your resume and write in short sentences about your roles, tasks, and accomplishments. In an interview, follow the same technique. While different recruiters differ about the ideal length for an answer, I believe 35-45 seconds are enough to answer one question. You should be able to concisely and comprehensively answer questions about the position you are applying for, the skills you are claiming, and the resume you have provided.
Conclusion
You might do everything right but not pass your interview or get a call back for an interview at all. You must not lose faith. Things happen. Just remember that your resume is your beast. Be mindful of the words you use in it. Use the STAR method to sum up your experiences, both in the resume and the interview. Stay true to your passions and your experience. Do not exaggerate what you can offer the company and deliver what you claim. You will definitely be able to end up at your dream company if you stay tenacious and work on your skills and personal brand.