Amazon 3*45 Interview
Summary
I recently completed a three-round interview process at Amazon, where each session focused on Leadership Principles (LPs) and coding challenges. I found the interviewers placed significant emphasis on both my problem-solving approach and how I applied LPs in past situations.
Full Experience
I recently went through a three-round interview process with Amazon, with each round lasting 45 minutes. Every round consisted of at least two Leadership Principles (LPs) questions followed by a coding question. I made sure to use the STAR format for all LP questions, which was very helpful for structuring my answers, and I encountered several follow-up questions for each scenario I presented.
Round 1:
- Leadership Principles:
- Tell me about a time when you did an in-depth analysis.
- Tell me about a time when you received negative feedback.
- Coding: I was given a matrix containing characters and asked to find all possible words. The initial question felt a bit ambiguous, but after I asked multiple clarifying questions, the interviewer mentioned that a dictionary of all possible English words would be provided for validation.
Round 2:
- Leadership Principles:
- Tell me about a time when you couldn't commit to a deadline.
- Tell me about a time when you realized that the approach you took wasn't correct midway through development.
- Coding:
- The first coding question was to Group Anagrams.
- The second coding question involved designing a system to track user visits. I needed to implement two functions:
login(username), which is called every time a user visits the website, andgetOldestVisitedUser(), which should return the oldest user who has visited only once. For example: if I calledlogin('jeff'), thenlogin('jessy'), and thenlogin('jessy')again, callinggetOldestVisitedUser()should return 'jeff'.
Round 3:
- Leadership Principles:
- Tell me about a time when you helped your coworker.
- Tell me about a time when you went beyond your responsibilities.
- Tell me about a time when you faced an obstacle and how you overcame it.
- Coding: I was given an amount and asked to return the possible denominations. The valid denominations included Bills = [20, 10, 5, 1] and Coins = [0.25, 0.50, 0.1]. For instance, if the amount was 6.35, the expected output was 'One 5 One 1 One 0.25 One 0.1'.
Overall, all rounds focused heavily on both Leadership Principles and the thought process behind solving the coding questions.
Interview Questions (4)
Given a matrix containing characters, find all possible words. The interviewer clarified that a dictionary containing all possible English words would be provided for validation.
Given an array of strings, group anagrams together.
Design a system with two functions: login(username) and getOldestVisitedUser(). The login(username) function is called every time a user visits the website. The getOldestVisitedUser() function should return the username of the oldest user who has visited the website only once.
Example: login('jeff'), login('jessy'), login('jessy'), then getOldestVisitedUser() should return 'jeff'.
Given an amount, return the possible denominations. Valid denominations are: Bills = [20, 10, 5, 1], Coins = [0.25, 0.50, 0.1].
Example: If the amount is 6.35, the expected return is 'One 5 One 1 One 0.25 One 0.1'.
Preparation Tips
I prepared for the Leadership Principles by practicing the STAR format extensively, which was crucial for structuring my responses and handling follow-up questions effectively. For the coding rounds, my preparation involved solving a variety of data structure and algorithm problems.