I applied online. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon in Feb 2014
Interview
I applied online in Jan 2014. Received an email from recruiter about setting up two phone interviews, each of 45 minute length. The recruiter was supposed to send me a follow up email about which areas the questions will cover etc. but it was sent after the first interview started.
The interviews were back to back with 15 minute break between them.
The questions were purely technical and only one of the interviewers asked about why I would like to work in Amazon, I think it was more to do with starting a conversation than taking any notes from my answers.
Both interviewers for the first 10 minutes asked questions on some basic algorithms, their complexities and Maps etc.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
The questions were something on the lines of,
- Given a tree, output levelwise nodes (Ans: It was actually the BFS algorithm, but I didn't realize it at that time)
- Find first unique substring (In O(n)) (Ans: Use counting sort variant)
- Convert an array into balanced binary search tree (Ans: First sort the array, then use recursive algorithm after splitting the array at mid, and using the mid as a node)
- From two arrays N and M find the combinations that add up to say X (Ans: I was drained by the time second interview started, so the only answer I came up with was of O(n2) complexity i.e. using two FOR loops)
Hackerrank round first and then two LC questions as the final round (BFS/DFS medium). Also had a behaviour component, testing the leadership principles and how my experiences aligned with them.
Expect one behavioral LP question followed by a leetcode medium or hard for two rounds. Be prepared to answer in depth on the behavioral questions and review LeetCode’s list of questions from Amazon.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Tell me about what AI platforms you use to help you work more efficiently
HR interview, then I had 1 45 minute coding round with 10 minutes behavioral and 35 minutes coding. Behavioral round was typical star format questions probing at leadership principles. Ex. Tell me about a time you took initiative and it didn’t work out.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Given an m x n grid of characters board and a string word, return true if word exists in the grid.
