How to get recruited at Amazon

Insights from 200 split loops in hiring decisions

Many blogs advise about acing the behavioral interviewing at Amazon. But what does it take to actually get the offer? Most of the 226 hiring decisions I was involved in, were split loops: some evaluators recommended in favor, while others recommended against hiring the candidate. What factors contributed to an offer in such situation? In this post, I reveal factors that got candidates hired versus dismissed in split interview loops.

To set the stage, let's talk about the hiring process, which may differ from the organizations you know. The Amazon interview process has several stages, including a recruiting screen, a first round interview, and a final round interview. The final round interview is called a Loop interview because you are "looping" through several interviewers in a short period of time - typically 1 day.  These 3-9 interviewers will assess whether you are a good fit for the role, but also exemplify the Leadership Principles and raise the bar for Amazon’s employees (yep, that means be better than the average Amazon employee currently in this level!). Each evaluator (columns in below figures) assesses 2-3 factors (the rows in below figures), which were determined in a pre-interview meeting where the Hiring Manager communicates which factors are key for the role. Within 24 hours, the evaluators individually insert their feedback into the recruitment tool, and vote not just for 'Inclined' or 'Not inclined' but also 'Strong Hire' and 'Strong No Hire', which will make a difference in the ensuing meeting deciding whether you will be hired, considered for another role ('recycled') or dismissed from Amazon recruiting for the near future ('no recycle', strong no hire):

If you are interviewing for two roles or teams, your Split Loop interview has a combination of interviewers from each hiring team. This was the case in my hiring decision, where I got an offer for positions in Seattle and in New York. The in-person round in one place included virtual interviews by folks in the other place.

What's your baseline success rate at this stage? According to Misha Yurchenko, the percentage of candidates that receive a job offer following the Amazon Loop interview is 20%. In my opinion, the key reasons are that (1) both the hiring manager and the bar raiser have to support the hiring decision (official policy), and (2) the post-interview discussion has to convince all interviewers that the candidate will at least perform adequately both at the specific role and the likely career at Amazon (my experience). Here is how that unfolds in these four common situations:

Situation 1: Hiring Manager Inclined, Bar Raiser Not inclined to Hire

Situation 2: Hiring Manager Not Inclined, Bar Raiser inclined to Hire

Situation 3: Both veto powers Inclined, but not all interviewers are

Situation 4: All inclined

Let’s give examples of each, with the initial scores, the outcome and the key learnings: