I recently interviewed for a Technical Project Manager role at Amazon. As a background, I should note that I have fifteen years experience in the IT field and ten as a PM. Based on the way my process unfolded, I strongly believe the Tech PM role at Amazon is intended for more senior PMs with a great deal of experience, at least at the team with which I interviewed. Everyone I spoke to had roughly the same amount of experience I had or more.
The interview process was in four phases: a phone screen with a recruiter, a 30 minute light PM oriented phone screen, a 60 minute very intense phone screen, and a series of onsite interviews.
The phone screen with the recruiter was the usual chat: are you interested, what is the job, tell me about your experiences, what is your salary range. I gave a low salary range. I honestly don't think my salary range mattered to them- they may just have been concerned that I wanted too much money.
The first light PM phone screen basically just walked through my experience, kind of a long bio discussing the work I did and the things I enjoy most and least in my previous jobs. Looking back, I get the sense that they were looking for how I reflected the core Amazon values in that chat as I was asked for stories that reflected items like ownership, bias for action, etc. That was a fine interview, low stress, just both sides feeling each other out to see if there was a fit.
I did well in that interview and was moved to the second phone screen. This was the most intense of all the interviews. The team member who spoke to me clearly had a list of questions to ask and scenarios to walk me through, and was extremely diligent about keeping me on track and answering his specific questions. He asked a combination of resume based questions and scenario based questions. His questions came in a torrent. As I finished my answer to one question I was given the next. Total time in that phase was 45 minutes, then I asked questions.
Several days later I received the notification that I would have an onsite interview. I was first scheduled to interview at 11 but had an additional manager added for earlier in the day so I came in earlier to talk. I was also told that I would be interviewing for one of two different jobs. I ended up having six interviews, all 45 minutes each, and spoke to eight people.
From my first meeting, with a Manager of Software Development, I had the strong feeling that there was a bias in favor of hiring me. Our interview was more of a chat, as it was very easy and low key. I felt a good rapport with the Manager and I asked him as many questions as he asked me. In fact, about halfway through the chat, he smiled and opened his laptop and said something like "I need to ask you these questions and document your answers" and we had a nice scenario based conversation. Most of the other interviews followed more or less the same pattern. Mostly the team wanted to hear how stories from my past professional work would apply to core Amazon values, and I had prepared to speak to that. There was one interviewer who seemed particularly tough and I think deliberately twisted one or two of my stories to confront me slightly and see how I might react in a meeting in which I had a fairly hostile questioner, but I stood my ground and professionally answered his questions and ensured that my message came across. The last two interviews both walked me through PM scenario type questions of the style of "If you were designing Twitter, never having used it, what how would you approach it?" and follow up questions like "What would you say are the key features?" and "How would you make decisions if the product ran behind?"
Though it was exhausting to talk and tell stories for five hours, the interview process was in no way painful. I made sure that my narratives addressed the core Amazon values and received obvious feedback (smiles or excited typing) that they really enjoyed that. I liked the people I spoke with and thought they would be good colleagues.
By far the most important advice I'd give any applicant is to be sure to read up on Amazon values. They are clearly very important in the company -- in my questions I probed those topics and every person I spoke to mentioned them. In my case they liked that I had stories about a strong customer focus, a strong bias for action, and a backbone when facing adversity. I had one or two stories in which I failed as an employee and rather than have that count against me, I think that worked in my favor as it showed that I'm interested in growing and learning from past mistakes.
Within 90 minutes of my leaving the interview, I received a generous offer from Amazon.
