hey guys in today's video we're going to talk about how to ace a phone interview with amazon
actually with any recruiter remember amazon is one of the most challenging companies to recruit with
jeff bezos had disclosed to fast company that he would rather interview 50 people and not
hire anyone than to hire the wrong person so i guess that says a lot what i mean with this
is that if you apply these tips to your phone interview with amazon you're mostly guaranteed to
make it to the next stage not only with amazon but with any company actually
so in today's video we'll talk about how to prepare for a phone interview how long are
phone interviews usually for what are the most common questions on a phone interview
and also what questions to ask at the end to the recruiter are you ready let's dive into it how
to prepare for a phone interview before you walk to that interview or before you answer that phone
make sure you prepare let's give a sneak peek to the email amazon has sent me before our interview
they gave me so many hints and tips extremely valuable for my preparation and it clearly told
me that amazon doesn't want to spend any time with the wrong candidate straight away the answer to
the question how long are phone interviews? 30 minutes 30 minutes is actually the standard for
most of the phone interviews then they tell me this will be an opportunity for you to know more
about the role and for us to know more about your experience and skills what are you saying here
is read and re-read that job description because we're going to ask you questions you know much
of a good fit your are for this role and if you're skilful for this job position then
they also tell me there's going to be a number of competency-based questions around our leadership
principles two questions straight away what are competency-based questions? and what are amazon
leadership principles? competency-based questions require real-life situations as an answer don't
worry we'll go through examples and a method that will allow you to score in every answer you give
what are the amazon leadership principles? i've written them down in the description box below
as there are 14 of them in any other company these are referred to as the company values
in amazon everyone lives and breathes the amazon leadership principles and trust me while i work
at amazon the leadership principles were written at the lobby, at a cafeteria, in the bathroom,
at the office everywhere this recruiter she also tells me give a look into our website
and find out what it's like to work at our company i did not only do that but i did reach out to
amazonians and future peers that were working at amazon at a time and i told them hey i'm currently
recruiting with amazon and i would love to know what it's like to work at a company like yours
and i encourage you to do the same also in terms of preparations i would also advise you to create
a list of questions to ask at the end to the recruiter don't worry i'll walk you through
a couple of examples and also don't forget to subscribe and hit that bell button so that you
don't miss my separate video on what questions you ask a recruiter at the end of the interview
so let's go now to the most common interview questions so question that is always a high runner
in job interviews is "tell me about yourself" and in this question what the recruiters want
to know is to hear from you who you are what are your traits what are your values do you live by
similar values to the amazon leadership principles and of course they want to know about your working
experience and how much qualified and skilful you are for the role you're going to enroll at
and don't forget to connect your past experience with this role you're applying for and really give
them the looks and the feels of what it would be like if you were already in that role actually the
recruiter has sent me an attachment to this email which is called amazon recruitment guidelines
remember they want to do nothing but spending their time with the right candidate and they tell
me up front that they love the star method what is that the star method is a structured manner
of responding to a behavioural interview question by discussing the specific situation
task action and result of the situation you're describing so when the recruiter tells you "tell
me about a time when" this end that is your time to apply the star method and let them know
how have you used one of the amazon principles in the past so "examples of competitive based
questions" can be questions like "tell me about a time when you received negative feedback, how did
you deal with it?" / "tell me about a time when you had to complete the project and you had no
data or information available" / "tell me about a time when you exceeded your expectations" / "tell
me about a time when you have to deal with a difficult co-worker or stakeholder"
and many more feel free to go into the description box and find more examples
so now i'm going to give you an example of how i would have answered to one of these questions
let's say it was "tell me about a time when you had to make a decision but you had no data or
information available" so giving you one example i was challenged by my company to drive a market
analysis on a very small country and see if there was a market opportunity over there
so what happened is that this is a really small country we're talking about and in terms of
data there was no data available as we had as an issue with the system and we're not able to get
information from amazon in with regarded to this country sales so i had to work with other data in
terms of tasks i of course I reached out to amazon and said "hey guys we don't get data for this
country since week 15 of 2020. can you please fix this? and let us know when the data is available",
but on the other hand i took actions like: reaching out to my colleagues from the local
markets and know from them what are the products that are working in this market?
what does our market share look like? what are the percentages of our market share?
what are our key competitors? what is the consumer behavior in this market? are they price sensitive?
are they aware of our brands? and things like that are way more qualitative than having the
sales information but this type of information has actually allowed me to draw a plan,
a strategic plan of where to go after or what to go after when we have the chance of growing this
market so one of the things i mentioned during the preparation phase is prepare questions! there
is going to be time for questions and make sure you use that time. one of the amazon leadership
principles is learning and being curious so make sure you bring those leadership principles out!
go ahead and ask them questions things like what is your favorite leadership principle? what is
the leadership principle you live and breathe everyday? how is it like to work at amazon?
what has been the most challenging situation you have faced in your role while working at amazon?
what has been your most rewarding moment while working at amazon? and so many others so make
sure you don't miss my video in what questions to ask the recruiter at the end of the interview
guys smash that thumbs up button if you got value out of today's video and comment down below what
was your "aha" moment from today ! don't forget to subscribe and hit that bell button for more
content like this on a weekly basis. thank you so much for watching and i'll see you on my next one!