Working at Amazon is the top thing on your vision board. It’s what everyone knows about you. “They want to work at Amazon”. You’ve been levelling up your career one step at a time, with one eye on landing a job at Amazon. Maybe you’ve been approached for an interview, or you’re trying to network your way into the company. Interviewing for a job at Amazon is a unique experience. It’s not an interview you can do on the fly. It’s not a college exam that you can cram for the night before. You need at least three weeks of practice before your interview.
Before you accept or apply for an interview at Amazon, you’ll want to read this article. We’re going to cover the basics of why you need to prep for your interview and how you can get a job at Amazon.
How to Get a Job at Amazon
You want to make sure you’re interviewing for the right role at Amazon. There have been highly qualified professionals with over ten years’ experience who have failed multiple interviews. It turns out they weren’t applying for the position that best reflected their skill set. You might find that you’re focusing so much on one job that you don’t see there’s a better-suited one for you.
Ideally, spend at least three months prepping for an Amazon interview. If you take the interview on the fly or without training, the chance of you getting lucky is tiny.
Memorising answers to questions you’ve found on Google or Quora won’t land you a job at Amazon. It’s your storytelling that is going to get you the job.
Using STAR storytelling is an effective way to articulate and communicate your value (back link to a previous blog).
If you want to get a job at Amazon, show them your business impact and ROI – Use STAR storytelling. It’s one work culture where no one is going to hold your hand. They want you to think big and deep dive into problems to find their solution. Amazon doesn’t care about the fancy title on your CV or your extensive academic background. What they care about is your ability to deliver results.
Best Amazon Interview Tips for Diversity
You might get an opportunity to interview at Amazon out of the blue. It could come after years of networking or by a stroke of luck. You’re so excited you don’t want to reschedule and miss your chance of landing that dream job.
Stop. Listen to yourself. You’ll know if you’re not ready.
No one is ever going to walk into an Amazon interview 100% confident. It is human nature. You want to get yourself to 90% because being a little nervous can be good and show you’re invested in the interview.
Preparation is key
While you’re preparing for your interview, you want to record yourself answering practice questions. You want to answer in less than a minute, ideally 45 seconds. Use Zoom to record yourself, so you can watch back the footage and still be able to see yourself while speaking. You’ll want to practice this anywhere from 50 to 100 times–so you need at least a few months to prepare.
Use STAR storytelling
You don’t need to memorise every answer. If you focus too much on pre-prepared responses, you could become flustered by a curveball. When you know your background and have your story developed, you can answer any question that Amazon throws at you. When you think of your leadership principle, you should have a minimum of twenty stories to go with it. You want to know your business impact so you can show Amazon your ROI using the STAR format – Situation. Task. Action. Results.
Interviewing is a game of ping pong.
You want to be able to keep the conversation flowing naturally. Practice your 45-second answers is important because it’ll show your business impact and peak their interviews. You could answer one question, and they can come back with another three based on your answer
If you’re not ready, reschedule your interview.
At an absolute bare minimum, you need three weeks to prepare. Not three days, three weeks. That is how long it will take you to build and develop your story.
The only person who can get you a job at Amazon is you. Do the preparation work and record yourself answering questions so you can become comfortable with the interview process. If you’ve got a foundation to work from, you might be able to prepare yourself in three weeks. For most people, you’re going to need at least two months to develop your story and become comfortable with the interview format. In six weeks, you might have your story, but it could take ten weeks for you to become comfortable telling it.
Amazon Diverse Workplace
Diversity is one of the big topics in corporate America. Most companies have a diversity and inclusion policy, with a goal of at least 18 to 20% of their workforce being from a diverse background. We have known larger multinational companies to increase this goal to 25 or 30%. Why do businesses like Amazon care about diversity? You can’t be an ‘All American’ company without looking like America. Companies trade off the idea of being an American company, and having a diverse workforce is at the heart of that.
Diversity has also been proven to improve a company’s performance, as individuals have different life experiences to draw from. Deloitte has found that diversity increases innovation by 20%, with inclusive hiring programmes generating up to 30% more revenue per employee.
Companies like Amazon care about diversity because it’s essential to their corporate image and their profit margin. If you want to join the ranks of Amazon or any big-name tech company, you want to spend at least a few weeks developing your story. Amazon cares about what you can bring to their business and how you can think on your feet. Set yourself up for success, make yourself comfortable with the interview process, and build your story.
Are you working towards landing your dream job at Amazon? Are you networking and trying to get an interview? You can find out more about our professional coaching and how we can help you build the story that will show Amazon why they should hire you.