[0:00]Hi, I'm GG, an ex Amazon Bar Raiser here at Day One Careers. This video is one of a series that we're putting together so you can hear from current Amazonians about their journey to Amazon and their interview experience. Obviously, this channel is packed with our advice and best practices, but as I've explained many times, the Amazon interview process isn't completely homogeneous. People have varied experiences and approaches. So, we've been talking to current Amazonians to get their stories. Now, just one thing I will say is that some of the strategies deployed by the people that I interviewed wouldn't necessarily be strategies that we'd advise. But it worked for them, so I'm sharing them with you and you can draw your own conclusions. I hope you enjoy meeting them as much as I did. So, hey Mandy, how you doing? I'm very well, GG. Good afternoon. How are you? I'm very well, thank you. I got to start with, honestly, thank you so much for taking the time out of your Saturday. It's Saturday you kind of late evening, where are you exactly actually, I don't know. I'm I'm currently in India, so it is uh 7:20 p.m. Okay. All right. Well, thank you for giving me your Saturday night. I mean, living it up spending Saturday. Thank you, thank you so much. No, I I appreciate being here with you, so I thank you, thank you for the opportunity. Amazing. So we're just going to have a chat basically because I know that you are a relatively recent joiner to Amazon. or we'll we'll talk through all of that in a minute. And of course, I you've also been following kind of the Amazon interview Wiz, which is then obviously recently morphed into Day One Careers for a while. So we've got a little bit of a history together, which is super cool, and it's fantastic to see you on the other side through your journey. So we're going to check through your journey. So tell me where were you before? What brought you to Amazon? Uh, so I was I worked in multiple sectors. I worked in the healthcare sector, then I worked in the, uh, you know, finance sector. And I had essentially taken a career break, uh, part of it, which was, uh, you know, voluntary because I wanted to be with my family. I hadn't seen them in five and a half years since I was in the US. Uh, and part of it was then driven by, uh, you know, the pandemic that all of us faced in 2020. So, um, my background essentially is, uh, I'm an engineer by education. I did a double master's in the US, and I've primarily worked as a business process consultant and also as a product manager. And that's when I decided that, uh, you know, I wanted to start interviewing for big tech firms to be able to do, uh, more quality work. So I was focused on quality, and, um, the interesting thing is that, uh, when I had the Amazon offer, uh, I had offers from Netflix and also from Wayfair. But, uh, the leadership principles at Amazon is actually what drew me to them. Uh, sounds like a cliché now that I'm an Amazonian, uh, however that is the truth of the matter. And, uh, you know, we'll talk more about my story, but I think that'll validate, uh, the fact that what I'm saying is actually true and not because I'm an Amazonian. So yes. Yeah, for sure. And just for the sake of everyone that's watching, tell us what what is your role at Amazon? What team do you work in? What's your job function? Sure. Uh, so I am part of the last mile and Quality Analytics team, which is also referred to as the LMAQ team. Uh, and I'm currently in the role of a program manager there, uh, where my goal is to be able to build programs and solve the pain points for, uh, you know, the delivery partners that we have, uh, the drivers and also basically the DSPs, who are individuals who make sure, uh, that all of our products get into the van and then get delivered to us. Uh, so, you know, given the, uh, magnanimity of, uh, the packages that Amazon delivers on an every day basis across the globe. Uh, it is very important that we make sure that we are serving, uh, our delivery assistance, our delivery partners, uh, with the right impact or, you know, with the right with the right resources, so that they are comfortable on their routes, right? Uh, so that is the program that I am working on, uh, and I am, uh, working primarily with six intake feedback mechanisms, uh, to be able to evaluate the kind of data that comes there, uh, and then build solutions for them. Okay, awesome. Sounds incredible. And as you were, I was interviewing someone from Ops last week, I think, and I don't know whether I've released that one by the time I released this one. But he was talking to me about something like, I might remember this wrong, like a million packages going through a single one of a single FC in a day. Absolutely. Absolutely. So he's he's absolutely correct when he says that. Uh, and, uh, you know, just, um, when we are customers, in fact, you know, if even if you're not on the LMAQ team at Amazon, right, uh, you may not know the, uh, number of packages that are going through. Because if someone's working on Alexa or Prime, uh, those segments are very different, right? Uh, but it is when you are, say, at the middle mile or the last mile, uh, the teams that we work on, uh, we have that first-hand experience of being able to understand, uh, the kind of packages that actually go out every day. And, uh, when you're only an Amazon customer, it's you go at the click of a button, the product order gets placed and because you're a prime member, you're going to get it in two days. Yeah. And it all seems so easy as a customer, you're spoiled because you just press the button. You expect that it'll be here two days, and if it's like day two one hour, you're like, where's my package? There's so much that goes on behind the scenes to make that possible. It's mad. Absolutely. So then let's have a chat about you decided that you wanted to go and work at Big Tech, and you mentioned that you had offers for Wayfair and Netflix and obviously Amazon, and I'm sure you applied to a few others. So, why don't you, if you wouldn't mind, I've been asking everybody to just tell me about their preparation process. Everyone has very different preparation processes. Some I have found a little surprising, some, I think, have been a bit more standard. So, share with me like, how did you go about? You don't have to tell me bit, you know, my new shy detail, but how did you go about preparing? Kind of where did you go for resources? What did you prioritize? Talk us through that. Sure. Absolutely. Uh, so let me start with this that, um, you know, I, of course, I was leveraging LinkedIn, right? Uh, and I happen to have networked with someone, uh, who works for Amazon in Bangalore in India. Uh, I didn't know this gentleman, and, uh, he had worked for four and a half years, then taken a six months break and then come back, so he was a boomerang candidate as, you know, we'd call it. Uh, and, uh, so he came back, and, uh, when I got my interview invite, I just reached out to him just to get some input. And I, I categorically remember him saying this, that Mandakini, if you treat the Amazon behavioral interview just as a behavioral interview for any other organization, you will not clear it. Uh, and that stuck with me because I wasn't sure what he was referring to. I, I didn't even know what he meant, right? Uh, so I asked him to just share a few more details with me and he did, and that one sentence essentially became the pillar because of which I prepared the way I did. And then, of course, I went online, and I, I identified what sources were there, and, uh, I don't remember how I stumbled upon your YouTube page. I, I wish I remembered that, uh, I'd be happy to share it, but I really don't, uh, but I did. Yeah. And that was my next stop. Uh, I made sure to watch the entire playlist you have for Amazon interviews. It's a good it's a good thing you're not watching it now because it's about three times as long as it was a year ago. Oh God. I should go back and see, you know, what what what more I should be learning. Uh, and, and I did that, and I began to make notes as to, uh, not just what the leadership principles said. You know, so it wasn't just about customer obsession, or it wasn't just about All Right a Lot, but it was about, okay, what is, what is the interviewer going to want to hear from me?
[9:02]And then what I did is I went back to my resume and I picked up each bullet point on my resume and started building scenarios out of that in the STAR method.
[9:15]Because what was going to happen is that I was sure that I wanted to take into account how many scenarios I needed to have so that I wouldn't repeat. And I remember a video of yours which categorically said, if you're going to repeat a scenario, take permission because during the debrief, you don't want to be in a situation where the interviewers, you know, may wonder that I as an interviewee, perhaps didn't have the depth of knowledge and therefore I repeated a scenario, right? Uh, so I said, okay, if I move to the loop and I have two phone screens, which means a total of seven individuals, uh, even if I have to talk them through three scenarios each, uh, which is that with a buffer, I need to have 25 scenarios prepared.
[10:09]Wow. That's a lot. So I did not, I was categorical about one thing that I did not at all repeat any situation. Uh, I was almost to the point where I had to, but then I said, no, you know, let me see what else exists out there. Right. And, uh, so I wrote 32 and then I mapped them. Right. I, I didn't do the other way around, but I, I I did this. I did do this, uh, which worked for me. Because there were, you know, there are like four or five leadership principles, which, which will work in every scenario, whether it's customer obsession, ownership, bias for action, insist on the highest standards, and, uh, and so there were like common across the board, right? Uh, so that is, that is how I prepared, uh, and not in the interest of wanting to scare anyone, uh, but I say this that, uh, the Amazon behavioral interview, uh, you know, preparation, needs a lot of, I think let me take that back. It needs focused preparation. Uh, it could be four hours, it could be six hours for someone, uh, you know, it could just be two hours for someone, right? Uh, but it needs that focused input. Uh, we cannot go into the interview expecting that the interviewer's going to ask us a question and we'll say, okay, the situation was this and this is what I did, and, you know, in in a minute I'm done. The expectation is for us to answer in the STAR method, so we've got to be prepared accordingly, right? And, uh, that's what I did. So, the interview prep material was your YouTube channel.
[12:57]Uh, and, uh, Don't name check anyone else. I'll them.
