By : Ankur Arora
So this is for all of you, who are going to attend Amazon’s Placement drive at SASTRA on 13th-14th August, 2013. I have been approached by a lot of juniors who want to know about the process Amazon follows, so I suppose this is the best place for everyone to see this.
Firstly get one thing set in your mind; they are only interested in your coding skills, your thought processing and your ability to come up with efficient solutions to the problems.
About last year’s interview process:
Round 1: It was a written round. 28 objective questions from Apti, OS, Linux, Networks, Linux and Programming were asked. Of course the major part was on programming but a couple of questions each was asked from other streams. 2 Coding questions were also asked. They were powered by ‘InterviewStreet’ and we had to code and compile online to verify the result.
Round 2: This was a group round. Not a GD though. All the candidates were divided into 4 groups of around 8 each and every group was assigned a mentor out of the Amazon people who had come for the placement process. A coding question on Trees was displayed on the projector and everyone was asked to come up with a solution. First we had to get the solution verified by the respective mentor and only then we were to write the code for that. It is an important round because they see how you handle such long questions which need a lot of thinking and how do you come up with a good solution and convince the mentor that your solution will work properly. They gave one hour for this round.
Round 3: This was a personal technical interview. One interviewer will ask you coding questions which you need to solve on paper. And the most important part is how you improve the efficiency of your code after you have written it for the first time. The number of questions asked in this round depends upon how you have answered the previous questions and also on the interviewer’s mood.
Round 4: This again is a personal technical interview. But this time they will ask not only coding questions but also theoretical questions to check your knowledge on subjects like OS, OOAD and Networks. This will by far be the deciding round because here they check your overall knowledge.
Round 5: This will be a personal non-technical interview. The interviewer will mostly be the hiring manager himself and he’ll just ask about your interests and hobbies and how has your interview experience been so far. Try demonstrating your interest in the job and also try and tell him about your technical expertise and any other point you want to bring to his notice. Very few come up to this round. So if you are there, then half the battle has been won.
Areas you should concentrate upon:
For the written round prepare analytical C/C++ questions well. You should be comfortable with pointers and data structure implementations. Also brush up on your Linux, OS and Networking concepts. No one wants you to deep dive and become champion of these fields but you should always be able to understand the question and think about the correct answer.
For the group round and technical interviews, brush up on your Data Structures, especially Trees, Heaps and Dynamic Arrays. It will be a plus point if you know some concepts like vectors and arraylist and you are able to apply them while coding the solution.
For the non-tech interview and also other rounds, be confident when you are talking to the interviewer and always discuss with him about the way you are solving a certain problem. Your approach to the problem is as important as the fact that you are able to get the final result or not, so tell him each step you are doing and keep him involved. Long pauses in between are usually not good.
So having given you this information, remember that the process might be different for you people. But these guidelines will never the less help you. Give your best in all the rounds because the final decision is based on the cumulative of scores you get in each round.
All the best. Hope to see some of you in Amazon soon
Ankur Arora
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