Amazon.com Operations Manager Interview Questions & Reviews
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Updated Apr 5, 2012 – Interview questions and reviews posted anonymously by interview candidates.
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Difficulty Rating [?] Based on 22 ratings 
“Difficult” Interview
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Interview Experience [?] Based on 22 ratings
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| 1–10 of 22 Amazon.com Interviews | Sort by |
Operations Manager at Amazon.com
Posted Apr 5, 2012
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4.0
Difficult Interview
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Overall Positive Experience
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Interviewed and No Offer
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Interviewed Jul 2011 (took a day)
We have three round of interviews. the first round was about general quesitons. for the second the third round, everthing is practical. The first round is a phone interview. and for the others, they are all in person in Seattle. People there are very friendly, but some of the questions are harder than what I expected
Interview Questions
Other Details
The interview consisted of a 1:1 Interview.
Helpful Interview?
Yes |
No
Inappropriate?
Operations Manager at Amazon.com
Posted Mar 23, 2012
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3.0
Average Interview
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Overall Negative Experience
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Interviewed and No Offer
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Interviewed Nov 2011 (took 2 weeks)
Got the interview through my university recruiting process. Had 1st round at the university- 1 interview, and 2nd in Seattle. The one in Seattle had 4 1:1 interviews, all fit no cases or mini cases. 2 interviews were ok, one clearly the interviewer didn't know much about interviewing people, just reading questions from a paper, and the 4th one was a bit aggressive and made my life hard asking follow-up questions about every answer I had.
Interview Questions
Other Details
The interview consisted of a 1:1 Interview.
Helpful Interview?
Yes |
No
Inappropriate?
Operations Manager at Amazon.com
Posted Feb 14, 2012
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3.0
Average Interview
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Overall Negative Experience
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Interviewed and No Offer
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Interviewed Jan 2011 (took a day)
I attended a career fair and submitted by resume. But, I could not meet anyone from operations division. So, I got contact information from a recruiter and contacted the manager in operations. I was selected for the first round and I was asked to submit the application. But, never got back from them.
Interview Questions
Other Details
I got the interview through a College or University and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview.
Helpful Interview?
Yes |
No
Inappropriate?
Operations Manager at Amazon.com
Posted Feb 4, 2012
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4.0
Difficult Interview
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Overall Neutral Experience
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Received and Accepted Offer
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Interviewed Apr 2011 (took 3+ weeks)
Conducted 2 phone interviews. Tell me about yourself, behavioral questions (Time you made a change, Gave bad news, etc). In-person interview was two phases. There was a panel interview (4 managers). Prior to the in-person interview they sent 4 scenarios and a math problem. In the panel interview, the managers good cop/bad cop on the scenario questions. They also conduct the math problem. Know how to do the math, they will change aspects of the problem during the interview to ensure you actually know the math. The last phase is talking about the position and what you can expect. They are fishing to see if you are scared of the long hours, their "Peak" season (Nov. 20 - Dec. 25), and learning new things.
Frugality is important to Amazon and it shows in their offices. They are afterthoughts. If, as a manger, you thought you may have a solitary place to work on projects it won't happen. Most of your day will be spent walking the floor or going over numbers at a at door desk (finished plywood about four feet off the ground).
Management - they will tell you things have changed to reduce their 30% turnover. I doubt its anything Amazon has done and more of what the economy had done to job seekers. Ham-handed management through muscle.
Interview Questions
Negotiation Details
Not to much to it. The salary and bonus were what I was looking for.
Other Details
I applied In-Person and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview, a Group/Panel Interview, a Skills Test and a Background Check.
Helpful Interview?
Yes |
No
Inappropriate?
Operations Manager at Amazon.com
Posted Jan 3, 2012 — 3 of 3 people found this helpful
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3.0
Average Interview
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Overall Positive Experience
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Received and Declined Offer
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Interviewed Jul 2011 in Columbia, SC (took a day)
Contacted by Amazon military recruiter on LinkedIn. Submitted my resume and set up for a phone interview a week later with the recruiter. Very straightforward interview, it lasted about 30-40 minutes with basic questions about my background and leadership experience. Mostly just to get a good feel for your decision making. Very friendly and helpful. When he was satisfied, he told me to expect a call from the HR dept within a few days and they would schedule another phone interview with an Sr. Operations Manager.
A few days later, the HR rep sent an email asking when I would be available for my next interview. I scheduled a week later and the Sr. Ops Manager was easy to talk with and felt like his interview style was very similar to the recruiters. Approx. 45 minutes passed and he felt confident to push my application forward for a 1:1 interview at a later date. HR contacted me about a week later and told me there was a hiring conference being hosted by Amazon in Columbia, SC. The Travel Dept. set up airline, hotel and a rental car in my name to arrive the night prior to the 1:1 (in approx 3 weeks).
The weekend before leaving , I got a surprise email from HR with a homework assignment to have completed NLT 8:00 am that Monday. Nothing crazy, it was a word document with 5 questions with various Fulfillment Center worker scenarios. One question was a math problem dealing with workers production and completion rates. They gave part of the answer and asked you to figure out the blanks. They said be prepared to brief all your answers during the 1:1 interview process to the Amazon team members.
I flew into Columbia the night before (Tues). I got to the hotel about 6:00pm and all the accommodations at the for the car and Marriott had no issues. They sent me a tentative schedule of events when I turned in my answers. I had a 2:00pm show time at the Conference Center located just down the street.
When I showed up at the Conference Center, at 1:45pm, I was greeted by the welcome staff at a table in the lobby. They escorted me in to a holding room with about 15 other OPS candidates. A HR rep came in at 2:00pm and gave a quick brief on what to expect.
Minutes later, our names were called out and we got into groups and as we were escorted into the main area of the conference center. They had stations set up enclosed by black curtains. The escort walked each one of us to a different station, and she introduced you to a team of two Amazon Reps sitting inside the booth. First station I hit was the HR Rep and a Senior OPS.
After approx. 20-30 minutes, they gave me an opportunity to ask them questions,and I felt pretty good about everything that had transpired. On cue, the escort was waiting to take me back to the holding room, until the next booths became avail. I got to talk to the other candidates about their interviews a bit, but most folks were afraid to speak or give anything away...
The escort came in and we started the process over, this time I went into an area with an dry erase board. There was a calculator on the table in front of the team. After short introductions, they asked me to pull out my math problem and explain my answers from the HW assignment. Satisfied with that they started to ask about "What if's" So they gave me a threw out a few curve balls which deviated from the homework scenario. Stunned a bit on the onset, but once I saw what they were asking for, I recovered and saw the pattern they were after and answered accordingly. At one point, I felt like one interviewer was not satisfied with how I was getting my answers so she started asking questions which i found confusing... Could have been some nerves on my part, but the other guy seemed to get confused also and tried to explain my process to her... We got the same answers, but I went about it a bit differently. It never got heated or anything, but i did not feel great leaving the tent after that round. In hindsight, think she was trying to see how I deal with pressure...
Third and final round went into the tent with a HR rep and an Operations Manager. Pretty straight forward questions more focused on my experiences in the military. Overall felt very confident, but did feel a bit tired at this point as I found myself struggle a bit trying to find some answers. Both were very understanding and patient and professional.
Once completed, I was escorted out and told they would be in touch in a few days. Standard answer for everyone.
Exactly one week later, I noticed my linkedIn acct had an unusually high amount of profile views... +300 instead of the normal 5 to 10 avg per week. The next day I got a call from the Senior Recruiter in HR. Nice man and was very helpful. He said I was a person of high interest, and proceeded to offer me the position of Area Manager starting at 70K.
Interview Questions
Reason for Declining
I told him due to my extensive military experience, I wasn't interested in the Area Manager job, just the Operations Manager. We were at an impasse at that point so I declined the position. He asked me to give him a week to see what he could do, but since I wasn't available until January (official military retirement date), there wasn't much he could do until we got closer to my availability date. True to his word, he called me and gave me the same offer a week later. Again I declined, but he said to call him back in mid November to see what was avail then. I didn't do that because I got a job with the Federal Govt. Very impressed with their organization and professional staff!
Other Details
I got the interview through a Recruiter and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview, a 1:1 Interview, a Group/Panel Interview and an IQ/Intelligence Test.
Helpful Interview?
Yes |
No
Inappropriate?
Operations Manager at Amazon.com
Posted Oct 2, 2011 — 1 of 1 people found this helpful
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3.0
Average Interview
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Overall Positive Experience
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Received and Declined Offer
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Interviewed Jul 2011 in Carlisle, PA (took 2+ weeks)
Applied online and received a very prompt e-mail reply that was "boilerplate", containing a list of questions for me to answer. Answered the questions the same day and received an HR e-mail the next day asking for a block of time periods that I could have a telephone interview. My telephone interview was with a Senior Operations Manager and came one week after my initial application. Within 24 hours of that interview I received another HR e-mail inviting me to in-person "pod" interviews in three weeks. Three days later I received another e-mail inviting me to an earlier set of "pod" interviews, which I accepted. The pod interviews followed the script as described very well elsewhere on glassdoor. I got the flow problem, one I had seen verbatim on glassdoor. As other have said, getting the answer correct is important, but knowing the answer is only the beginning. I was given several change scenarios verbally so the interviewer could see how I reasoned on my feet. In my opinion, you have to be prepared for the flow problem just to get past first base, but you cannot really cram to beat the "What if" scenarios that follow. You either think analytically or you don't, and this data-driven company wants analytical leaders at a minimum.
I interviewed with three Senior Operations Managers in three separate one-on-one interviews. There were no trick or shock questions, just the "Tell me a time when..." or "How would you handle XXX?" In every case, I felt the interviewers went out of their way to introduce themeselves fully and tell their story first, and they always kept open some time at the end for my questions. I appreciated their candor in their answers and felt like they were really interested in me as an individual, rather than simply trying to weed me out. The HR rep running the pod told us very clearly when we would hear from them and what the three possible outcomes would be: 1) We get an offer, 2) we get an offer for a position we had not applied for (due to them finding some other strengths in areas such as facilities, finance, etc), 3) they will not be moving forward on our application and they would not be able to give ANY feedback. I received an offer 20 days after my initial application.
In general, the people I dealt with were professional and friendly. They were open about the fact that Amazon is growing very quickly and is looking for leaders who know how to develop the next geenration of leaders. "Prepare to work quite hard and be rewarded with a nice package" seemed to be the tone. On the other hand, most of my scheduled interactions were rescheduled once, and their e-mail communications were clear to expect that, since their operations leaders are quite busy. I tried to be positive and outgoing and felt like that was reciprocated by everyone I dealt with.
Interview Questions
Other Details
I Applied Online and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview, a 1:1 Interview and a Skills Test.
Helpful Interview?
Yes |
No
View Comments (1)
Inappropriate?
Operations Manager at Amazon.com
Posted Sep 27, 2011 — 2 of 2 people found this helpful
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5.0
Very Difficult Interview
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Overall Negative Experience
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Interviewed and No Offer
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Interviewed Aug 2011 in Huntington, WV (took 3 days)
I was contacted by Amazon, who found my resume posting on Monster.com. After the initial communication from the HR recruiter, I was interviewed in a series of phone interviews. The first phone interview was by an HR person, that was pretty standard. Then I had a series of three more phone interviews by various employees of the company, two that worked at the present location of where the job would be at. Those, again, were fairly standard behavioral type phone interviews. Even so, they were very long, the longest clocking in at over 90 minutes. This was pretty grueling and longer than any phone interview I'd ever experienced in a long career.
Finally they made an offer to fly me to West Virginia where the actual job posting was. This was a long, long flighty from where I live literally across the country. After a long and grueling flight process (changed planes three times) and all day on a plane, I was happy to see when I checked into my room that it was a beautiful room in a nice, new hotel. I relaxed and prepared my notes for the following day's interviews.
Monday morning I arrived early at the Amazon location, one of two in that town. I was greeted cordially by the receptionist and got my first taste of Amazon - when they had told me dress was casual, they meant it. The receptionist was dressed in jeans and t-shirt. I saw various employees trickling in and it was more of the same. I felt pretty out of place in my slacks and button up shirt. I thought I was being fairly casual by not wearing a tie! I felt like the interviewers and HR person who "prepared" me for this interview process should have let me know that it was super casual, but no one thought to tell me during the process.
Interviews were to start at 8:30 but no one was ready. I ended up cooling my heels in the lobby for more than an hour before people were ready. Finally I was brought into an office and so began a brutal series of two on one interviews. I lost track of how many people I interviewed. Several of the people acted like I was a huge inconvenience and one woman was fairly hostile from the beginning. Many of the people I interviewed with were very nice, but all were pretty serious in their duties to grill me. I felt like I was being interrogated. It was truly exhausting. I believe by the time I was done I had been interviewed by at least 10 people over the course of 6 hours with one 30 minute break.
Combined with the lengthy phone interviews, skills test, etc. I have never been through a more grueling and intensive interview process before in my life. Honestly, by the time I was done, I kind of felt like I had been put through a wine press and wrung out. If the interview process was like this, did I really want to work for this company? At that point, I wasn't sure. I could say a lot more about the interview process but this is long enough already.
Once I was done I came out and my rental car had been ticketed. I took it back in and told them about it and the person who was my liaison while I was there assured me that it would be taken care of. Well, two months later and guess what? Still hasn't been taken care of and the rental care agency has assessed me an additional fee for processing it. Also, Amazon refused to reimburse me for the rental car because I hadn't booked it through their travel agency. This left a bad taste in my mouth.
I was not extended an offer, after all that, but after that interview process and after reading online all the talk about grueling hours and lack of work/home balance I am very glad. Not to mention that I now have a great job with another company at a much higher level and salary than the one that Amazon was offering so it all worked out for me pretty well, considering.
I'm unsure whether or not I would recommend Amazon or not at this point. All I can say to be fair is that my experience was negative but I've read others who didn't feel the same. I'd say that if you are a young, upcoming manager relatively fresh out of college than this might be a good move for you. For someone like myself, who has a lot of experience I'd say no, probably not a good move.
Interview Questions
Other Details
The interview consisted of a Phone Interview, a Group/Panel Interview, an IQ/Intelligence Test, a Skills Test and a Personality Test.
Helpful Interview?
Yes |
No
View Comments (1)
Inappropriate?
Operations Manager at Amazon.com
Posted Sep 23, 2011
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2.0
Easy Interview
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Overall Positive Experience
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Interviewed and No Offer
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Interviewed Sep 2011 (took a day)
I was contacted by a recruiter at Amazon through a LinkedIn group that we share. I sent him my resume and received a wealth of information in return, including job descriptions for two separate management levels. Two days later he e-mailed me and arranged for us to have a 30-minute "get to know you" phone conversation. Fortunately, in reading several Glassdoor reviews, I was prepared for a more intensive phone screening! The recruiter was very pleasant and informal when he called, and he immediately put me at ease. We had a relaxed conversation throughout. Unfortunately, the position he originally contacted me about had just closed, and he explained that Amazon's management hiring cycle typically runs March through August, but that he would like to remain in contact with me in the event that there should be an unforeseen opening. He then explained Amazon's business philosophy and reliance upon Kaizen, as well as the leadership structure of the company (below the corporate level). Afterwards, he asked me three, direct questions: Can you describe your last two jobs? When you arrived in those positions, did you have to "fix" them, or were they functioning well? What metrics did you use to track your progress and show improvement? We ended up speaking for 55 minutes, in what had been scheduled for 30. Overall, it was a positive experience--I simply wish I had not missed the opportunity cycle!
Interview Questions
Other Details
I got the interview through a Recruiter and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview.
Helpful Interview?
Yes |
No
Inappropriate?
Operations Manager at Amazon.com
Posted Sep 22, 2011
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3.0
Average Interview
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Overall Positive Experience
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Received and Declined Offer
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Interviewed Sep 2011 (took a day)
I had a good experience with my initial phone interview, it was brief and professional. After the initial screening they sent me to an on-site interview with an Ops Mgr, Sr Ops Mgr and Local HR Rep. The questions were straightforward and friendly. I found the interviewers to be young, intelligent, ambitious and friendly. I was asked the typical behavioral questions, reviewed the math problem, and briefly talked about the writing sample that I had submitted previous to arriving. I found it refreshing the interviewers were very frank, open and honest about the long hours during peak season, the day to day stressful situations that might arise. I did not experience the "bullying" or rapid-firing attempts to stress me out as mentioned in some reviews. A few days later a Sr HR Rep called to discuss feedback from my interview and to discuss the offer.
I was very impressed with the amount of talent and I can see how the "can do" attitudes of those successful at this postion can be a large motivator for peers.
Interview Questions
Reason for Declining
The positions I had interviewed for at the desired locations were all filled, and the HR Rep had offered to start me off in another city with the hopes of transferring me to to the desired location. Unfortunately there was no guarantee of the transfer. I turned down the offer because the transition was not the right fit for me at this time.
Other Details
I Applied Online and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview, a 1:1 Interview, a Group/Panel Interview and a Skills Test.
Helpful Interview?
Yes |
No
Inappropriate?
Operations Manager at Amazon.com
Posted Sep 12, 2011
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5.0
Very Difficult Interview
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Overall Positive Experience
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Received and Accepted Offer
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Interviewed Jun 2011 in Coffeyville, KS (took 3 weeks)
Contacted a recruiter through LinkedIn. Sent a copy of my resume. Recruiter contacted me next day for more information. Emailed me a questionaire. Completed and emailed back. Emailed me two days later with time for a phone screen. Completed phone screen and emailed me phone interview time following week. Completed phone interview and was contacted with a face to face interview two weeks later. Panel style interview and math flow problems. Completed interview on Tuesday. Received an offer that Friday! Awesome pay, great benefits and handsome signing bonus! People were genuine, intelligent and perceptive. Culture is very progressive and commited to a lean business model.
Interview Questions
Negotiation Details
No need. Offer was outstanding!
Other Details
I Applied Online and the interview consisted of a Skills Test, a Group/Panel Interview and a Phone Interview.
Helpful Interview?
Yes |
No
View Comments (1)
Inappropriate?
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