Amazon Interview Process: The Loop, Leadership Principles and How to Prepare

The Amazon interview process usually runs from an application, sometimes through an online assessment, to an interview loop where you meet several employees in turn, each assessing different parts of your skills and experience. Amazon's 16 Leadership Principles run through the whole thing. If you prepare real stories for those principles, you've done most of the work.

Amazon publishes a lot about how it hires. Use it.

How the Amazon interview process works

The details vary by role and level, and Amazon says so on its How we hire page. But the general shape is similar. You apply on the Amazon jobs site, usually for a specific role. Some roles, such as many software development positions, include an online assessment. Then there's usually a recruiter or phone screen to check basic fit, followed by the interview loop, which is the main stage, and finally a decision and offer.

Amazon's careers site also publishes role-specific guides, for example for software development engineers, business intelligence engineers and customer service associates. If one exists for your role, read it before anything else on the internet.

The interview loop

Amazon describes the loop on its interview loop page: you meet individually with current employees, and each interviewer assesses different aspects of your skills and experience.

That's why you can't rely on one great story. Each interviewer is usually looking for evidence on different areas, so you need a broad set of examples. Amazon's hiring pages also mention a "Bar Raiser" as part of its process, and it's worth reading what Amazon says about that role on its own site before your interview.

Amazon's 16 Leadership Principles

Amazon's careers site lists 16 Leadership Principles and says it uses them every day. Here they are:

1. Customer Obsession
2. Ownership
3. Invent and Simplify
4. Are Right, A Lot
5. Learn and Be Curious
6. Hire and Develop the Best
7. Insist on the Highest Standards
8. Think Big
9. Bias for Action
10. Frugality
11. Earn Trust
12. Dive Deep
13. Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit
14. Deliver Results
15. Strive to be Earth's Best Employer
16. Success and Scale Bring Broad Responsibility

Read Amazon's own description of each one, not a summary. The wording tells you what kind of behaviour they want to hear about.

How to prepare STAR stories

Behavioural questions at Amazon usually start with "Tell me about a time when…" The STAR method, which Amazon lists as a preparation topic, is the clearest way to answer:

• Situation: the context, in two or three sentences.
• Task: what you were responsible for.
• Action: what you did. This should be the longest part.
• Result: what happened, with a number where you honestly can.

Two things I'd stress. First, say "I," not "we." Interviewers need to know what you personally did. Second, include what you learned, especially in stories where things went wrong.

Build a simple table: each principle down one side, two real stories next to it. Many stories will cover several principles. A launch you rescued might show Ownership, Bias for Action and Deliver Results at once.

Example: turning a story into a STAR answer

Say the question is "Tell me about a time you went beyond your role to help a customer."

A weak answer: "I always put customers first. In my last job I often stayed late to fix customer issues."

A stronger one: "Our biggest client's monthly report kept arriving with errors, and they'd started talking about leaving (situation). It wasn't my report, but I owned the relationship (task). I traced the errors to a manual data step, wrote a simple script to automate it and set up a check before each send (action). The errors stopped, the client renewed, and the script was adopted for four other accounts (result)."

Notice the specifics. That's what interviewers are listening for.

Mistakes that cost candidates offers

Memorising answers to common questions. Interviewers ask follow-ups. Rehearsed answers fall apart under "And what would you do differently?"

Hiding behind "we." It makes it impossible to judge your contribution.

No results. A story without an outcome is half a story.

Only success stories. Prepare failures too. How you handled them often says more than your wins.

Ignoring the role-specific guide. Amazon publishes them. Skipping them is a missed opportunity.

How to talk about failure at Amazon

Expect at least one question about a mistake or a failure. Candidates often dodge it with a fake weakness, and interviewers notice.

Pick a real failure where you were clearly responsible. Explain what happened briefly, then spend most of your answer on what you did once you realised, and what you changed afterwards so it wouldn't happen again. A failure story with a genuine lesson is often one of the strongest answers you can give, because it shows honesty and judgement at the same time.

Freshers and career changers

If you're a fresher, use projects, internships, college societies and part-time work for your stories. The principles still apply. A college fest you organised can show Ownership and Deliver Results as well as any corporate project.

If you're switching from another field, your previous work is full of stories. Map them to the principles. Our guide on how to get a job in an MNC covers screening and referrals at large companies more broadly.

What to do this week

Read all 16 Leadership Principles on Amazon's site. Write one real story for each of the first five, in STAR format. Say each one out loud and time it at about two minutes.

Then practise with someone who'll ask follow-up questions, or use an AI interview coach like Elisen. For the bigger picture on moving to a new employer, see our guide on how to switch jobs.