Are you getting ready for an Amazon behavioral interview?
Below, we break down the most common Amazon behavioral interview questions, leadership principles, and essential interview prep tips.
Amazon relies more on behavioral interviews than other FAANG companies like Apple or Meta, where technical skills are usually weighed more heavily.
It takes about 4 to 6 weeks to successfully prepare for interviews at Amazon.
These are the most common Amazon behavioral interview questions with example answers.
Amazon’s behavioral questions focus on your past behavior and performance. They typically show up in dedicated behavioral interview rounds and throughout the entire Amazon interview process.
Your answers are supposed to reveal quite a bit about you and help predict job performance—at least in theory.
“I’d rather interview 50 people and not hire anyone than hire the wrong person.” - Jeff Bezos, Founder and Former CEO, Amazon
These questions usually begin with “Tell me about a time…” or “Give me an example of…”
Interviewers want to know:
Amazon's focus on leadership principles also aims to lift employees up, help them grow, and get ready for future opportunities. They believe this is how leaders operate.
They also clue your interviewer into how you think. Amazon is always seeking evidence of leadership principles in your answers.
During your behavioral rounds, your interviewer will focus on how your answers align with Amazon’s Leadership Principles.
Amazon is well known for its strict adherence to the management principles laid out by its CEO, Jeff Bezos.
One of these is the famous ‘Day 1 mentality’ that undoubtedly had much to do with Amazon’s colossal success.
But Day 1 isn’t the only tenant that Amazon holds dear. The company has 16 leadership principles, written by Bezos himself, that its employees, and the company itself, are expected to uphold.
Amazon’s 16 leadership principles are:
These principles are designed to create a work environment that fosters employees' personal success, including their growth, empowerment, and readiness for future roles.
Your interviewer wants to hear examples of your performance in past roles.
How did you show similar qualities to Amazon’s own leadership principles?
This is a list of the most commonly asked behavioral interview questions at Amazon, sourced from our library of real interview questions. These are all based on core leadership principles.
Effective interview prep involves practicing these questions, doing peer mock interviews, and spending time understanding how they relate to Amazon's leadership principles.
You'll likely be tested against all of the leadership principles. But these are five questions that show up again and again.
Below, you’ll find the concise explanation of each leadership principle and common questions.
These principles will be present throughout the entire hiring process. You should expect to answer questions about them in all of your interview rounds.
To provide exceptional customer service, you need empathy for the customer.
This means understanding their needs and desires and putting yourself in their shoes. Only then can you provide the best possible experience.
This Leadership Principle is massive for Amazon - Jeff Bezos has talked about its importance countless times.
“There are many ways to center a business. You can be competitor focused, you can be product focused, you can be technology focused, you can be business model focused, and there are more. But in my view, obsessive customer focus is by far the most protective of Day 1 vitality.” - Jeff Bezos
Prepare to answer behavioral questions about your relationship with the customer.
Interview Questions on Customer Obsession:
Amazon is a company that values ownership.
You'll take the initiative, make tough decisions, and accept responsibility for your mistakes. Amazon is looking for people who will roll up their sleeves and do whatever it takes to get the job done.
When answering questions about ownership, highlight examples when you took the initiative, made tough decisions, and accepted responsibility for your mistakes.
Interview Questions on Ownership:
Amazon has long been known for its culture of innovation.
The company strives to create effective and efficient solutions in everything it does. This commitment to innovation is clearly evident in Amazon’s approach to answering “invent and simplify” questions.
When presented with a problem, Amazon encourages its employees to think creatively and develop novel and practical solutions.
Interview Questions on Inventing and Simplifying:
Amazon is known for its customer-centric culture, and part of that is because of the company’s focus on speed and agility. Amazon expects its employees to make decisions quickly and efficiently without getting bogged down in details or second-guessing themselves.
At the same time, when making these decisions, you’ll need to be right a lot.
This can be a challenge, but it’s also an opportunity to show that you can take risks and think on your feet under pressure.
Interview Questions on Being Right, A Lot:
Show your ability to learn new things and explore new ideas.
For example, you might discuss a time when you had to quickly learn a new skill for your job. Or you might describe a time when you devised an innovative solution to a problem.
Emphasize your willingness to adapt and grow in your career.
Interview Questions on Learning and Curiosity:
Amazon leaders raise the performance bar with every hire and promotion. They recognize exceptional talent and move them throughout the organization.
Leaders develop leaders and take their role in coaching others seriously. This principle aims to foster employees' personal success, including their growth, empowerment, and readiness for future roles.
In this way, Amazon creates a culture of excellence that starts with its leaders and extends to all members of the Amazon workforce. Amazon expects its employees to always strive to reach higher standards.
Amazon is a company always looking to challenge its employees and help them grow.
Interview Questions on How to Develop the Best:
Amazon expects its employees to always strive to reach higher standards. They want to see employees who have pushed themselves to meet challenging goals and will continue to do so in the future.
This is the thing that makes Amazon such a great place to work. It is a company always looking to challenge its employees and help them grow, which helps them stay motivated and engaged.
Interview Questions on the Highest Standards
Can you develop and articulate a bold vision? This doesn’t mean that you need to have all the answers, but you should be able to show that you’re thinking big and have a clear idea of where you want to take the company.
So, when preparing for your interview, ensure you have a few good examples of times when you’ve thought outside the box and come up with innovative solutions.
Interview Questions on Thinking Big
Amazon likes to move fast and ship products quickly. This means that employees often have to make decisions without all the information they would ideally like to have.
In your interview, be prepared to share when you made a decision without all the information you needed or would have liked. Describe how you went about making the decision and what the result was.
Be sure to emphasize that you are comfortable taking risks and always looking for ways to improve your products and services.
Interview Questions on Bias for Action
Amazon constantly strives to provide customers with the best possible value, and its leadership principles emphasize this.
This means offering a wide selection of products at low prices and providing fast and free shipping on millions of items. To do this requires staying frugal at the corporate level to pass savings on to customers.
This interview will challenge you to think about times you’ve saved money or brought big results with little input.
Interview Questions on Frugality
This principle dictates that employees should always look for ways to improve their work and to be “vocally self-critical” when they make mistakes. In other words, Amazon wants its employees to focus on fixing mistakes instead of figuring out who to blame.
The company roots this philosophy in the belief that every employee has the power to make a positive impact and that blaming others only impedes progress.
Candidates who demonstrate commitment to continuous improvement, trustworthiness, and excellent character are often the most successful at Amazon.
Interview Questions on Earning Trust
No company is perfect, and Amazon is no exception. Things will inevitably go wrong from time to time, and it’s vital that employees can find quick solutions. This is where problem-solving skills come in handy.
Interviewers want to see that you can assess a situation and develop a timely and clever response.
Interview Questions on Diving Deep
Leaders are expected to have strong opinions and be able to stand up for what they believe in. Sometimes you must set aside personal beliefs to move forward as a team.
As you review Leadership Principles, think about how having to make decisions affects the macro outlook of a company like Amazon.
Interview Questions on Having Backbone; Disagreeing & Commiting:
Employees aren’t afraid to take risks and learn from their mistakes. Of course, this doesn’t mean you don’t care about quality. You should always strive to do your best work, but there is always room for improvement.
Amazon would prefer to deliver a product or service that is good enough rather than miss a deadline or fail to meet a goal.
Interview Questions on Delivering Results
The “Earth’s Best Employer” policy is more than just a nice-sounding platitude. It’s a concrete way of demonstrating that the company is committed to its workforce.
A company that can show it is dedicated to being Earth’s Best Employer will likely have an easier time recruiting and retaining top talent. And, as any manager knows, a happy, engaged workforce is essential to a company’s success.
By creating a safe, diverse, and just work environment, companies can boost their team morale and productivity and set themselves apart from the competition.
Interview Questions on Striving to be Earth’s Best Employer:
Amazon is responsible to its employees, shareholders, and the planet. Amazon's core values are sustainability and social responsibility, even if customer obsession dominates the conversation.
The company strives to ensure its operations positively impact the environment and that employees work hard to create a workplace where everyone can thrive.
They understand that Amazon’s size and reach give the company a unique opportunity to make a difference.
Interview Questions on Bringing Broad Responsibility:
Amazon claims that “speed matters in business.” This attitude extends to their interviews as well.
Be clear and concise while still displaying a depth of understanding with clarity of thought.
Your interviewer won’t appreciate meandering anecdotes that seem to jump all over the place.
That’s why Amazon isn’t secretive with its encouragement of the STAR method for answering behavioral questions.
The STAR method is a way of answering these types of questions in a succinct but complete way.
STAR stands for:
Set the stage with context, such as impending investor meetings and recent coding setbacks. Illustrate the complexity of the situation.
Clarify specific benchmarks or goals, such as a sales increase target. Define the task clearly.
Explore multiple options, consult with stakeholders, and emphasize empathy and understanding to navigate team disagreements. Involve team leads and senior engineers in brainstorming.
Demonstrate collaborative problem-solving and adaptability.
This resolution showcases the importance of empathy, effective communication, and team collaboration in achieving successful project outcomes.
Imagine your interviewer asked you to answer one of the most common Amazon behavioral interview questions, “tell me about a time you had to make a decision to make short-term sacrifices for long-term gains."
Use the STAR method to make the most out of your answer with no rambling or confusing answers.
Briefly describe the situation in which you had to make such a decision.
What was the context, how’d you know you needed to make the decision, etc.
You could say:
Elaborate on the necessary tasks involved with the decision to make short-term sacrifices.
Tasks are not the actions you took but are instead general concepts.
Different from tasks, what specific actions did you take for the task?
If your task was to learn more about user behavior, your actions could be phone calls or surveys sent via email to users.
Finally, talk about the results that came because of your actions.
In this interview question, you’d focus on long-term gains.
This sample answer uses the STAR method to articulate the situation, tasks, action, and result.
Using this method, your interviewer will learn a lot of helpful information about you in a short amount of time. This answer goes beyond what an HR manager might have even listed in the job description.
Hiring managers will often direct behavioral questions at past situations that can be very complex and nuanced or require some context to fully understand.
But with the STAR method, you don’t need to worry about leaving anything important out or wasting the interviewer’s time with a long-winded response.
Unlike other interview questions, there are no correct answers to behavioral questions, per se.
That is, there can be countless “correct” answers, as it’s based on your personal experiences.
However, there are several tips to help you succeed:
Research the general scope of the behavioral questions Amazon may ask you during your interview.
While you’ll never know exactly what questions you’ll be asked, looking over the questions listed in this guide should give you a good idea about what you’re up against.
Reviewing the position's job description may also help guide you in the right direction. For instance, managerial positions may get asked different questions than an Amazon RPM.
Brainstorm possible situations from your previous experiences that you could use for these questions.
Use this guide as a good starting point in your brainstorming. Focus on stories that directly touch on Amazon's leadership tenets.
After you’ve brainstormed relevant work experiences, write them down and flesh them out so that you’re not stumbling to remember some details amid the questioning.
Write them down according to the STAR method, as well, to make sure your answers are both concise and fully developed.
One particularly effective way to do this is by creating a story bank.
Do as much research as possible about the role you’re applying for and the work that the role’s department/team actually does.
Your interviewer is bound to ask questions to evaluate if you’re a cultural fit, and your prior research will only help to make the best impression possible.
Not only that, but your research regarding the role you’re applying for can give you a good impression of the behavioral skills necessary for the job. And by extension, it can give you a good idea of the behavioral questions they may ask regarding those skills.
Alongside our Amazon interview prep course, we also offer industry-leading interviewing coaching
Our Amazon interview coaches can help you:
How do you prep your interviews for Amazon behavior? Become familiar with Amazon's corporate values and practices. Remember specific times in your past that demonstrate skills and problem solving capabilities. Rehearse your experiences with the STAR method.
The STAR method allows for a streamlined approach to interviews for Amazon leadership. By sharing stories in a structured way, they can be evaluated for communication skills as well as technical projects.
Yes. Even in technical careers, you will face behavioral interview questions at Amazon.
Although your skills are important, Amazon wants you to perform professionally too. Good communication and a strong work ethic can help you stand out.
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