Reply to: Amazon recruitment process - anyone here been through it?

[edison]

was discussing with someone that I know the very topic, he and a group of friends have a closed group of tech people from financial sector and share answers from whatever interview they attend.
Once someone has all the right answers it is obvious they will ace the interview.

To his and everyone else's surprise it's quite not like that. His suggestion is that the roles do not exist in the first place.
The managers are just practicing their skills, it helps them benchmark candidates, gives the minions a sense of entitlement by having to judge and police other candidates.

My take is that it is a coordinated effort by the corporate world to boss people into place. A tired person is more likely to comply with a later demand.
A continuous undermining of the workforce mindset is good for the establishment.
And as said above they need people in the essential jobs for the rich to have access to good services and for society to work.
But at same time they create jobs from thin air so that employment stats are high and also people don't stand on their but at home thinking of how to create problems for everyone else.

In advanced societies, it is no longer the question of how to use resources efficiently, it's more of how do you create a system that people find "fair" to sell their labour.

Or at least this is my take on it.

admin: Why is this not in general? it is definitely not technically related...

That doesn't sound very plausible to me, at least in my experience. I've managed several large IT recruitment campaigns and most internal hiring managers are hard pressed to devote the time to doing proper shortlisting then interviewing. Maybe your friend's colleagues in FS aren't that busy but you can benchmark candidates in other ways without having to interview people for non-existent jobs.

[SussexSeagull]

Did you pop out for ten minutes? If so check behind your bins for a contract.

[Minty123]

Well anyway, I applied for a Solutions Architect role 10 days ago and haven't heard back yet.

Should have gone for Senior SA but don't know how to code in the new stuff.

I wouldn't worry about the time spent...they took 4 weeks to organise a telephone interview. another 6 weeks to organise face to face (virtual) and then took 3 weeks to respond that i was successful at the face to face. the role is no longer available so awaiting to be placed on another similar role.

I've spoken to a few people at AWS and it's quite common.

[Minty123]

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.

I've just gone through the loop of 5 interviews. As long as you incorporate the leadership principles, have examples for competency/behavioral questions it's easy.

I jut got feedback that I cleared the loop, but the role is on hold. The recruiter will now speak to the wider team to see if she can find me a role in the team. Apparently.

The 2 tips I would give are,

- be yourself, have real examples as they dive deep in to them.
- the recruiters are there to help and they'll tell you which principles your interviewers will question you on. so each principle has a skill they're trying to find. pay close attention to have backbone and customer obsession. they're really important.

1 of the interviewer will be a "bar raiser" (most probably outside of the wider team) to have a non-biased view so watch out for that.

[ChimpMaster]

Well anyway, I applied for a Solutions Architect role 10 days ago and haven't heard back yet.

Should have gone for Senior SA but don't know how to code in the new stuff.

[cojak]

True, but it's not General either, so I'll move to Business/Contracts.

[GigiBronz]

Surprise surprise it all went dead after I finished the numerical assessment, so perhaps they get rid of anyone with a below 80% score (got 77%, 92% percentile).

was discussing with someone that I know the very topic, he and a group of friends have a closed group of tech people from financial sector and share answers from whatever interview they attend.
Once someone has all the right answers it is obvious they will ace the interview.

To his and everyone else's surprise it's quite not like that. His suggestion is that the roles do not exist in the first place.
The managers are just practicing their skills, it helps them benchmark candidates, gives the minions a sense of entitlement by having to judge and police other candidates.

My take is that it is a coordinated effort by the corporate world to boss people into place. A tired person is more likely to comply with a later demand.
A continuous undermining of the workforce mindset is good for the establishment.
And as said above they need people in the essential jobs for the rich to have access to good services and for society to work.
But at same time they create jobs from thin air so that employment stats are high and also people don't stand on their but at home thinking of how to create problems for everyone else.

In advanced societies, it is no longer the question of how to use resources efficiently, it's more of how do you create a system that people find "fair" to sell their labour.

Or at least this is my take on it.

admin: Why is this not in general? it is definitely not technically related...

[dsc]

Surprise surprise it all went dead after I finished the numerical assessment, so perhaps they get rid of anyone with a below 80% score (got 77%, 92% percentile).

[GigiBronz]

I think there is a different more subtile dimension to the technical challenges and all dinky companies doing them.
People in a society have to be put in their place, there is a group of continuously shrinking pool of people doing essential jobs (that is also supplemented by immigrants).
If you fall from grace with the system you get pushed around and tried until hopefully take a job that nobody else wants to do.

See David Graeber Bulls hit Jobs.

[Platypus]

I'm not keen on the whole corp kool aid tulipe

This is seriously on another level.

I probably wouldn't mind three stages if they were meaningful ... seems that Amazon is obsessed with something they call leadership principles which just sounds like a lot of waffle. It feels more like joining a cult than a tech company

I hate all this corp / leadership bollocks

Still sounds bulltulip to me.

I've read numerous times it's a waste of time.

Imho those tests are only good for picking out people who can estimate quickly .

You never know, you positive attitude and willingness to embrace the Amazon culture might get you through
OTOH, and seriously, it likely won't. But best wishes nevertheless. I see a lot of AWS architect jobs, and am sometimes tempted to go for it.

[edison]

At least you’ve shown a willingness to learn by taking some AWS training? It’s really not difficult to move to cloud architecture if you’re experienced.

You can start off with the Foundational Cloud Practitioner certification. I'm not a techie but even I have found it relatively straightforward to learn the content (although I haven't scheduled the exam yet.) If you are an experienced on-prem architect, you'll find it very easy I'm sure. Then you can do the Associate level Solutions Architect cert.

There are tons of free as well as good paid for resources to help you pass AWS or other cloud certs.

[dsc]

I'm looking to apply to Amazon/AWS but there are dozens of jobs that all sound very similar.

By applying for one job does that automatically exclude you from other jobs, or is the company forward-thinking enough to consider an application across a range of departments/jobs?

I don't have AWS or Cloud experience by the way, so I am trying my luck to see if they would consider an experienced on-premises architect.

Same here when I was applying, they must have at least 5 jobs at any time which have slightly different role names (or the same) and are effectively the same thing. I applied to 3 I think and only heard from one, which kind of makes sense.

From what I've heard from the bloke on the call if you get all the way through they will try and find you a spot somewhere due to the amount of positions they have. I reckon the reject so many people that actually getting someone on the other end is a bloody miracle so they don't want to let those go.

[cojak]

I'm looking to apply to Amazon/AWS but there are dozens of jobs that all sound very similar.

By applying for one job does that automatically exclude you from other jobs, or is the company forward-thinking enough to consider an application across a range of departments/jobs?

I don't have AWS or Cloud experience by the way, so I am trying my luck to see if they would consider an experienced on-premises architect.

At least you’ve shown a willingness to learn by taking some AWS training? It’s really not difficult to move to cloud architecture if you’re experienced.

[PCTNN]

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.

Applied for a permanent role at Amazon something like 3 years ago.

Did the phone interview, standard 45-60 minutes.

All good, so a couple of days later they invited me to do a full day in person interview which would have consisted of 6 1-hour interviews with different people (designers, devs, project managers,....)

I declined the invite and never applied ever again despite knowing they are paid extremely well.

[ChimpMaster]

I'm looking to apply to Amazon/AWS but there are dozens of jobs that all sound very similar.

By applying for one job does that automatically exclude you from other jobs, or is the company forward-thinking enough to consider an application across a range of departments/jobs?

I don't have AWS or Cloud experience by the way, so I am trying my luck to see if they would consider an experienced on-premises architect.