Amazon recruitment process - anyone here been through it?

[dsc]

Looks like I have a stage 1 / phone interview with Amazon, for an automated warehouses position (automation engineer). Read and heard loads of stuff about their recruitment process and whilst I'm not keen on the whole corp kool aid tulipe, it might allow me to do stuff remotely which is what I'm after at this stage in life.

Anyone here had anything to do with them recruitment-wise?

[jayn200]

I had a phone interview with them for a ba role and it was with a senior VP who is pretty well known who was brought in to essentially build a new line of business for amazon. I did a lot of research on this person and Amazon and what they were trying to achieve with this new division and was prepared to have a good conversation about it. What followed was embarrassing. This senior VP then proceeded to read off a standard behavioral interviee script and didn't even bother to follow up on any of my responses.

Easily could have had a junior hr person do this, waste of this person's time.

Not saying your experience will be the same but not a good experience.

I didnt progress to next stage.

[GigiBronz]

did the dev challenge, some dinky tests that only figured out half of them. You had to score 80% at least or some nonsense.
Complete waste of time.

They've rejected my application and said they cannot provide any feedback.

[dsc]

Well so far it's not great I have to be honest, this is the second week I'm waiting for stage 1 screening call date and it just isn't happening. Heard from a mate that his whole process took 2-3 months with a 1 month gap before they made a decision (and it's only when he said he will bail is when the got their tulip together).

Urgency isn't really on anyone's radar in the current climate.

[dsc]

Quick update, finally had a phone interview with them, turns out it was just a 10min chat with a technical guy. Got an email two days later saying there's a final stage with fecking 4 x 45min interview sessions and a 20min calc test to be done before.

This is seriously on another level.

[edison]

Quick update, finally had a phone interview with them, turns out it was just a 10min chat with a technical guy. Got an email two days later saying there's a final stage with fecking 4 x 45min interview sessions and a 20min calc test to be done before.

This is seriously on another level.

Is this for a perm position or contract? I'm not familiar with their hiring process but if it's perm, I'm not sure what you're expecting? As one of the world's most prestigious tech companies, they can take their pick of global talent. It's hardly likely to be a quick chat.

[KinooOrKinog]

Quick update, finally had a phone interview with them, turns out it was just a 10min chat with a technical guy. Got an email two days later saying there's a final stage with fecking 4 x 45min interview sessions and a 20min calc test to be done before.

This is seriously on another level.

Any company that needs to go through five rounds of interview before they can make a decision doesn't know what they want imo.

Doesn't help your situation really, but I remember way back in the day when they were still just doing books (around 2004 maybe), I got offered a buyer role with them. It was around thirty minutes interview with two separate people on the same day then they called me with an offer around two weeks later. They're obviously a lot further up their own a*se now.

[ChimpMaster]

Any company that needs to go through five rounds of interview before they can make a decision doesn't know what they want imo.

Doesn't help your situation really, but I remember way back in the day when they were still just doing books (around 2004 maybe), I got offered a buyer role with them. It was around thirty minutes interview with two separate people on the same day then they called me with an offer around two weeks later. They're obviously a lot further up their own a*se now.

A few years ago I had 4 rounds of interviews with Salesforce. In the final round they sent me a scenario to solve, using Salesforce modules (bearing in mind I had never used SF before) and expected me to spend 3 days working on it and then come in to present it to senior mgmt. That's when I said I've had enough and pulled out.

In hindsight it would have been a great move, especially with the stock options.

[edison]

Any company that needs to go through five rounds of interview before they can make a decision doesn't know what they want imo.

Doesn't help your situation really, but I remember way back in the day when they were still just doing books (around 2004 maybe), I got offered a buyer role with them. It was around thirty minutes interview with two separate people on the same day then they called me with an offer around two weeks later. They're obviously a lot further up their own a*se now.

The OP said there was a final 'stage' of four interviews, not five rounds which is a different thing. He might have had all 4x45 minutes interviews one after the other on the same day.

Having overseen a lot of recruitment myself from Heads of IT all the way down to service desk staff, it's true that hiring managers aren't always clear what they want, job profiles are poorly constructed and the elapsed time for the perm hiring process can be long and disjointed etc.

However, the costs and losses potentially incurred by a bad hiring decision make companies understandably risk averse. 3-4 rounds of interviews for well paid perm roles isn't uncommon - one with the recruiter, one 30 minute call with the hiring manager, a longer interview with hiring manager and maybe other close colleagues and finally HR and/or someone outside of IT is typical.

I don't understand why candidates think that's so excessive when the hiring company may be spending £50k plus on recruitment costs and a bad hire could cost hundreds of thousands or more.

[eek]

The OP said there was a final 'stage' of four interviews, not five rounds which is a different thing. He might have had all 4x45 minutes interviews one after the other on the same day.

Having overseen a lot of recruitment myself from Heads of IT all the way down to service desk staff, it's true that hiring managers aren't always clear what they want, job profiles are poorly constructed and the elapsed time for the perm hiring process can be long and disjointed etc.

However, the costs and losses potentially incurred by a bad hiring decision make companies understandably risk averse. 3-4 rounds of interviews for well paid perm roles isn't uncommon - one with the recruiter, one 30 minute call with the hiring manager, a longer interview with hiring manager and maybe other close colleagues and finally HR and/or someone outside of IT is typical.

I don't understand why candidates think that's so excessive when the hiring company may be spending £50k plus on recruitment costs and a bad hire could cost hundreds of thousands or more.

I think it's hard to compare a permanent recruitment process with a contractor one. We are very much used to quickly hire and quickly fire (although the latter rarely actually happens).

I need to recruit sales staff which is something way out of my comfort zone and that will be a multiple step process - step 1 is a prospecting call to a mobile's voicemail