The behavioral interview is one of the most significant aspects of Amazon interviews. Regardless of the interview type, each Amazon interviewer is assigned 1-3 leadership principles to assess candidates.
Leadership principles in Amazon interviews are so highly prioritized that they outweigh the performance in technical interviews, no matter what the position is. No candidate gets a hire vote unless they perform well in answering the behavioral questions..
Candidates should be equipped with scenarios for each principle in hand from their past career. It’s important to be able to explain them while being evaluated on any of the principles. The interviewer does not directly ask you to explain a scenario for a specific leadership principle. Instead, the questions are designed in a way where your answer indirectly shows your strength in the principle they choose to mention.
The list of Amazon leadership principles is long compared to the cultural values that similar companies have. Amazon has even increased the number of principles over the past couple of years. Some principles might look vague and some might seem contradictory. This can cause confusion for candidates who are preparing for any Amazon interviews.
In this series of articles, we try to better explain all of Amazon’s leadership principles with some sample interview questions to give you a clearer idea of what a real behavioral interview question might look like.
1. Customer Obsession
As Amazon strives to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, it’s highly expected that they will evaluate candidates based on their “Customer Obsession” related skills. For this leadership principle, candidates should provide scenarios to show that one of the most significant drivers in their decision-making had a positive impact on the customers. In your past experience, if you failed to properly know your customers’ needs, lost their trust, or prioritized other aspects (like company or personal benefit) over the customers’ needs, you are not considered a good fit for Amazon.
For example, if you chose a project in order to learn and work on the technologies you like, or to get promotion faster while you had a chance to work on a high customer impacting project, you will lose Amazon’s interest in hiring you.
Some sample scenarios you might be asked to provide:
- An interaction with a customer that proved to be challenging or conflicting.
- A situation where the customers’ needs were ambiguous and you had to provide clarification.
- A time when your personal or professional needs conflicted with a customer’s needs.
2. Ownership
An owner thinks about long-term values and doesn’t sacrifice them over short-term results. Candidates should show examples indicating how they go beyond their responsibilities to contribute to long-term success. It’s definitely a concern, if an employee avoids making tough decisions, evades taking on complicated projects, or blames others for mistakes.
Let’s discuss the last part. Mistakes are inevitable, when you make one, take the responsibility and prepare and execute the plans to prevent the same mistake happening again.
Some sample scenarios you might be asked to provide:
- Taking on work that was not part of your responsibilities in order to benefit customers.
- A situation that required you to give up a short term gain to create a path that led to long term gain or value for the company.
- An incident where you did not expect to meet a promised deadline.
3. Invent and Simplify
Amazon expects their employees to always look for ways to simplify the current processes or propose something new to benefit the company or its customers. They want to make sure that the candidate doesn’t just sit still and always accepts the current situation “as is”. Also, the expectation is that the employee will not only always look for new and simplified ways to solve complicated problems but also share insights with others and encourage colleagues to do the same.
Some sample scenarios you might be asked to provide:
- One of your most innovative solutions to a problem.
- A time when you solved a complex problem with a simple solution.
4. Are Right, A Lot
Honestly, this is one of the vaguest Amazon Leadership Principles even among the Amazonians. The description says, “Leaders are right, a lot”. This is interpreted to mean that they have strong judgment and good instincts. Leaders seek diverse perspectives and work to disconfirm their beliefs. Candidates are expected to provide scenarios in which they show that they can make proper decisions in difficult situations by seeking others’ opinions and learning from their past experiences. It’s a red flag when candidates show that they are not flexible in changing their point of view when provided with valid opposing opinions or if they don’t seek others’ opinions.
Some sample scenarios you might be asked to provide:
- An instance where the data available to you was insufficient or lacking in some way yet you were driven to make an important decision.
- A scenario in which you made a wrong or bad decision.
- A time when you were able to gather different perspectives together to solve a challenging problem.
Next …
In the next article, we will cover the next 5 leadership principles; Learn and Be Curious, Hire and Develop the Best, Insist on the Highest Standards, Think Big, and Bias for Action.
TechMockInterview.com
If you are preparing for Amazon Interviews, you should be well prepared for behavioral interviews. On TechMockInterview.com, professionals from FAANG and other top-tier companies provide various sessions to prepare you for your upcoming interviews. We recommend booking Behavioral Interview Mentorship sessions while preparing for your interviews and Behavioral Mock Interview sessions once you have your interview scheduled.
