I applied through a recruiter. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in Oct 2013
Interview
Amazon contacted me after receiving my resume through a conference database. They asked me to complete a 90 minute online coding assessment, where I was asked 3 different (relatively simple) coding problems (eg determine whether or not a LinkedList contains a loop). A little over a week later I heard back from HR saying that I had been selected to go to Seattle for an onsite interview.
The interview started at 11:45, and we were first brought into a room where we had lunch and casually talked to employees about Amazon and living in Seattle (there were about 30 of us, all students looking for post-graduation entry-level positions). Then we each were assigned an interviewer and brought to a small room with a whiteboard where I had 45 minutes to first talk about a project I had worked on/experience I'd had in school or internships. Then I was given a coding problem that I had to solve on the whiteboard. After I was finished, I had some time to ask questions of my own. There were four interviews just like this in total, in which I stayed in my room and interviewers came in and out. Two of my interviewers were very nice and helpful if I got stuck, one of them was kind of uncomfortable because I was confused about the problem and was struggling a little bit, and the other one seemed to really dislike me, looking at me like I was an idiot every time I said something or wrote something (he also tried to trip me up by saying that it was necessary to manually resize an ArrayList in Java, which I knew wasn't the case but it got me a little flustered and he told me I need to do some more research after the interview). That particular interviewer was stressful, but the other three didn't seem to want me to fail.
Overall I think that the people there were pretty nice, although maybe a little bit pretentious, but it is Amazon so I suppose they have a right to be, since many many people want to work there and they have the ability to select the best of the best candidates. It was also a little weird after the interview, since my last interviewer walked me to the lobby and left and there was no further discussion or convening. I also wish they had been courteous enough to give me a call telling me I did not get the job rather than sending me an email.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Give an example of a project where you failed.
Design a program that would select which elevator in a building would be the most efficient, based on where the elevator is located and headed and where the user is located and headed.
Interview by recuriter, Phone interview over Chime with one easy Leet code problem and 2 behavioral questions. Although the interviewer was very casual at the start of the conversation, it quickly changed into behavioral questions at the start.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Encoding optimization algorithm and talk about a project you did recently.
First round is just leet code coding which screens through AI before going into live coding. Pretty simple and straighforward. Not too tough. Recruiter walks through it pretty nicely. Not sure how many rounds there are exactly
After submitting my application for the Software Engineer position, I received an invitation to complete an automated Online Assessment (OA). The assessment consisted of standard coding challenges, primarily focusing on algorithmic and data structure problems. Unfortunately, a few days after submitting my solutions for the assessment, I received an email informing me that I would not be moving forward in the interview process and was rejected.