I had 2 phone screens with recruiters then I was flown out to Seattle to have 5 45 minute in-person interviews (and a 1-hour lunch with someone from the team) at their headquarters. LEARN THEIR LEADERSHIP PRINCIPALS, AND THEN LEARN THEM AGAIN! Get familiar with STAR answering. Have your family or friends practice with you. Have 2-3 "stories" for each leadership principal because you can only tell the same story twice even though all 5 of them will ask you the same questions reworded it feels like. Somewhere in your mix there will be a "bar raiser" normally they don't even know anything about the job you are applying for, they are just there to ask the "hard" questions and figure out if you are better than half of the existing team. I swear I prepped and prepped and prepped for the onsite interview but by the time I met with my 6th person... my brain was just fried. While I didn't get an offer, everyone I met with was very nice, professional, and personable. Some more so than others but that's with any interview process with that many people. The biggest bummer is that they can't give you any feedback other than "they decided to continue on with their search, but they saw high potential in you so we strongly encourage you to reapply in 6 months. Please, please don't knock Amazon off of your list"
okay...but if I'm not 100% sure what went wrong the first time around, how do I prepare to do better the next?