I applied online. I interviewed at Amazon (Sunnyvale, CA) in Jul 2017
Interview
You have one or two phone screen interviews. Essentially the first in English and a second in the language for which you applied. If you receive positive feedback from both interviewers you will be scheduled for an onsite interview.
In my case I initially had a single phone screen interview that went well. I was then scheduled for an onsite interview within a week.
Then, I had an informational phone call during which my recruiter decided to add another phone screen interview before the already scheduled onsite interview. For this unscheduled interview, they didn't ask me my availability and simply told me the date and time at which I should be available. Unfortunately, this interview resulted in a negative feedback and they ultimately cancelled the onsite interview. I am not sure if this recruiting experience reflects Amazon's standards but it seems that there was some mismanagement here they should have never made me believe that I had a chance to have an onsite interview with them. I shortened international trip and made arrangements to be available on that day and they couldn't care less about that.
Lastly, the company doesn't care much about you and once they toss you away, you have to chase them in order to get information. You should expect your recruiter or anybody at the company to only contact you as long as you are being considered. Should you fail one of the phone screen interviews, nobody at the company will have the decency to contact you unless you reach out to them.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
How would you say this sentence in many different ways?
I applied online. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon (Cam, England) in Mar 2017
Interview
I was sent a written test and once I sent the answer back, phone interview was arranged.
Phone interview duration was 60 min (it over run) and plus few minutes left for some questions at the end.
One person led the interview most of the time and the other person led the numerical part at the end in the last 10 min or so. The interview started off with them explaining the structure of the interview – firstly, why I am interested in the role and secondly, move on to my written answers to that I submitted earlier, then a 'coding test'. At this point, I pointed out that I have no prior coding skills, but they said they wanted to know my numerical reasoning, ‘coding like thinking' skills.
2 people were interviewing and we all phoned in and ‘met’ on a conference bridge. They didn't introduce their disciplines but I assume that they were both in a managerial role in closely related field to the advertised post.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
1) What was my motivation for applying to this position and how I found the job advert (because the role is quite unique, they said they are always interested in knowing how candidates come across with the position)?
2) Do you think you are comfortable with what you know about the role of knowledge engineer or would you like us to tell you more? - Quite a detailed description was given. Some questions were answered during this part.
3) Why do you think the particular written test was given, and how did you find it? I think this was an opportunity for them to find out if I knew the context in which I use the similar thinking process as a knowledge engineer would.
4) Over 20 min was spent on going through the written exercise, in quite a detail. When I was struggling I thought the interviewer was really helping me to get to the answer. So it felt like it was a positive learning process.
5) Numerical test using the script sharing online tool, lead by a second interviewer (10 min).