An Amazon employee has unveiled details about the notorious ‘interview loop’, highlighting its challenging nature.
If you’re not familiar with it, the Amazon interview loop is the final intense stage of the hiring process. It consists of 4-6 consecutive interviews, each lasting 45-60 minutes, all conducted in a single day.
According to the Amazon Jobs website, candidates will have individual meetings with current employees. Each interviewer evaluates different aspects of the candidate’s skills and experience to provide a comprehensive understanding of their potential performance at Amazon.
The website notes that candidates are assessed through the ‘lens’ of Amazon’s Leadership Principles. Current employees seek evidence of how these principles have been applied by candidates in past roles.
Interview questions are often behavioral-based, aiming to elicit ‘real examples from past experiences’ to gauge how candidates handle challenges, make decisions, and collaborate with others. An example question from the site is, “Describe a time when you took a risk, made a mistake, or failed. What happened, and what did you learn from it?”
An employee from Amazon Australia, working in the retail team, shared insights about the interview loop on Reddit. Naturally, many Reddit users were curious if the process is as demanding as rumored.
Redditor Unable_Star_2907 described the interview loop as ‘very intense’, elaborating on the process and revealing that it’s more complex than one might think.
They explained: “20 min phone screen from HR. 1 hour video call with hiring manager. Then The Loop, which is 5 hours of 1 on 1 interviews with 5 people.
“Among the 5 people in the loop, one person is the ‘bar raiser’. They are meant to be harsher on the candidate and scrutinize them more.
“After the loop, the interviewers can submit inclined/strongly inclined, decline/strongly declined.
“They then get in a room and discuss. The hiring manager and the bar raiser’s opinion are given more weight.
“A candidate needs all inclined from all 5 to get through.”
In a separate discussion, another Reddit user mentioned feeling ‘drained’ by the experience. They expressed: “I have never been in such an intense, monotonous, and dull interview process.”
They further added: “My voice was literally going out at one point as I was expected to speak for 30-45 mins. Most interviewers only left me with 10min at the end for questions, and I had way more questions to cover than the time allotted for.”
Another Amazon employee shared additional advice for succeeding in interviews at the company. Still, they acknowledged the difficulty involved. Emily Murray remarked on Amazon’s website: “Although I’ve had job interviews before, none have been as rigorous, lengthy, or thorough as the ones I had at Amazon. The process consisted of phone interviews with the recruiter and hiring manager, before a five-hour interview loop which involved several interviewers from across the business.”
Murray advises preparing examples from past experiences, asking interviewers questions, aligning responses with the job description, and using concrete data points to illustrate success.