Amazon Interview
Esther
After the phone screening, I got an interview chance with Amazon AWS.
Only about 10 days to prepare for it, and finally, it’s today!
Phone Screening
I applied for three positions I found attractive on Amazon at the end of May.
Honestly, I didn’t expect them to reply that soon.
And had the phone screening in early June, they invited me for the official interview after a few days.
Then I received a link to provide the date and time that I will be available.
After a week, I finally got the confirmed date and time of the interview.
I think Amazon’s job site is better compared to Apple and Microsoft. 🤔
PS. I also got a chance to have a phone screening with Apple. However, they turned me down in 10 mins right after they heard I can’t work full time now. (And said that I could reach out once I get my PR. 🤷🏻♀️)
The Preparation
Since I was told that there’d be both behavioural and technical questions, I spent lots of time on preparation.
- Studied Amazon Leadership Principles,
- wrote down all the cases I could think about for behavioural questions,
- watched many JS interviews on YouTube,
- even tried some leetcode problems.
Prep Call
The recruiter of Amazon is really helpful.
He asked me to book a “Prep Call” after I got the confirmed date of the interview.
I didn’t really know what’s that, but I just booked an appointment with him and made the call 3 days before the interview.
He shared some tips with me and also talked about the interview process.
And recommended I watch some videos on Inside Amazon (Amazon Job Offical Youtube Channel).
I have to say; those videos helped me a lot.
D-Day
For the interview, Amazon uses “Chime.”
Since I had some bad experiences with Google Meet, I decided to attend 15 mins earlier.
Somehow on Chrome, it couldn’t detect my camera and on Firefox it couldn’t detect my headphone.
So I had to download and install the desktop app.
Chime didn’t support background filters, so I had to ensure my background was clean.
The interviewer was a little bit late (about 2~3 mins), and there was a shadow interviewer with us.
He reviewed my resume and we talked about my previous position and daily routine at first.
Then after about 10 mins, we jumped into coding directly.
- CSS and HTML: how to make the text in the center of an image element.
- JS: nodeTree to HTML: write a function to draw nodeTree into HTML
- JS advanced: HTML to nodeTree: reverse what we did on Q2
After solving each problem, he asked if I have another solution for them.
Also, he was supportive and provided tips for me when I met problems or paused.
About 5 mins before 1 hour, he asked me if I had any questions for him.
I asked about the skill they are looking for and also about my background without CS.
The overall interview experience was pretty nice.
I did my best and let’s… follow the flow.