A recruiter reached out to me who had found my "profile" and asked if I'd be willing to interview for a Sr. Technical Program Manager role. She asked if she could set up a time to talk briefly the next day. When we talked she gave me some pointers on the first phone screen (which was with the hiring manager). Another recruiter actually scheduled the appointment for the following week. I thought that first interview went ok, but was not really expecting a return phone call. A couple of days later, to my surprise, the original recruiter reached out to me and was "excited" I was moving forward to another phone screen, this time with another Senior Technical Program Manager. That interview was scheduled for the following week, but I had to reschedule (last minute) because I was sick with the flu. The interview finally happened a week later and I thought it went well. A couple of days later the same recruiter reached out to me once again still "excited" that I would be moving on to the one-site interviews. At this point, she passed me on to another recruiter to coordinate.
A couple of days later the on-site interview coordinator reached out to me with a series of questions regarding my availability for the on-site interviews, salary expectations, references, etc. I responded and a few days after that the she scheduled the on-site interviews for a Friday about 2 1/2 weeks later. The on site interviews consisted of 5 45 minute interviews (1 was 2:1, the others were 1:1). There was also a 15 minute session with the recruiter confirming salary expectations, etc.
There were tons of questions regarding the Amazon leadership principles over the course of all the interviews. Sometimes the reference to the principle was subtle or asked as a "behavioral" question. It is clear the leadership principles are very important at Amazon. I thought I had answered most of these questions well as a very experienced program manager in my current job.
I was also asked to think through a number of designs for various problems from how a workflow would work for a hypothetical ecommerce ordering site for vehicles to how web services would work and deliver information to the Amazon website regarding the availability of a new hypothetical shipping option. I sensed a lot of questions on the scalability of my designs. I thought I answered these questions well, but there was very little information provided on how deep these designs needed to be, so I really don't know how well I did.
During the onsite interviews the recruiter said to expect a call from her, either way, on the following Wednesday. I felt the interviews went well, but not knowing how well everyone else who may have been interviewing for the same job did, I really didn't know what to expect. After an excruciating wait, the recruiter did call me shortly after 5pm on Wednesday, as promised, but the answer was an "unfortunately, we're not moving forward with you on this position" answer. She did mention the interviewers thought I'd be a "good fit" for Amazon, and that I could be considered for other positions if I was interested. At this point, we discussed some next steps.
Even though I did not get an offer from this experience, overall I was impressed with the process. The entire process was well guided and left me with a favorable impression of Amazon. I do wish Amazon could provide some feedback as to why I wasn't selected, but there is a corporate policy that prohibits this. Despite the glimmer of hope to possibly be hired in the future, I really have no idea why I wasn't chosen and what I should do differently the next time. A little bit of meaningful feedback would go a long way.
