Amazon Sr. Technical Program Manager interview questions

A amazon recruiter contacted me and I was given the opportunity to take an online test. The test was very straight forward and pretty easy. About a month later I was given a phone interview, that took 2 weeks to set up. The questions were very straight forward and about my past experience. At this point he wanted to set up a second phone interview that would focus more on my technical experience. This interview happened about a month after the first phone interview. The interview was about an hour long and was comprised of about 5 questions. The questions were very long and somewhat complex, you had to keep a lot in your head and describe how you would solve a problem through an architecture. I don’t think the questions would have normally been difficult, but you could tell the interviewer was reading from a paper, on a speaker phone and had a thick accent. This made it VERY difficult to understand, keep track of, and design as he read the long scenarios. I had to continually ask him to repeat and clarify what he was asking. As I was explaining the design, he would dive deeper (as expected) which required me to ask him to repeat some of the other aspects I didn’t not completely hear. He was a very nice guy, but I knew at that point the interview did not go well.

Applied through amazon career website. A recruiter approached me for a one hour phone interview. The interviewer was in the same hiring team with the title of Sr Technical Program Manager. S/he was able to challenge me with a number of questions about project management as well as my problem solving and design skills. Trust me the questions are very easy. The hard part is to figure out what they are looking for. They prefer short answers so they can jump in with follow-up questions. Later my wife mentioned that I did not sound relax. I was trying to sell myself so badly that sort of turned her or him off. Amazon people are not like Apple. You don't need to show yourself too excited. They are simply looking for someone who can do the job they have in mind. Agile project management is very important. Overall, I was not happy with my performance. But after 8 days, the recruiter (actually very nice and kind lady!) contacted me for the second interview. I was sort of surprised. Another phone interview was scheduled for the following week. This the interviewer was a Technical Program Manager (less senior) in another team. I suspect it was his first time to interview. He provided a good introduction about himself and the team who was interviewing me for (Baltaza Network ). He or she specifically asked me to keep my answers short. I think if I have another interview with him or her, I will fail again. Because he or she was like a robot. He asked very simple routine project management questions (biggest failure, difficult decisions, methodology, planning, etc.) and expected to hear the answers he or she knew. I was sort of overqualified for this role in fact. I conduct interviews in my current company so you can think about my feedback. After about 12 days, I heard back from the recruiter a very polite regret. This was my second rejection. 2 years ago, for another role I made it all the way to onsite interview. The hiring manager was very excited to hire me. This time also the hiring manager was interested in my qualifications I guess. He checked my linkedin a couple of times. I am not sure but I think hiring managers would love to hire. They are bored with this time consuming process which takes most of their time. But they have to get 2 "incline" or one "extremely incline" to be able to sponsor an onsite interview. After the onsite, even one decline can result in rejection so they have to start over with another person. This is the reason for the delayed decision making. Once they hire who they want, they either reject the other candidates or refer them to other teams. If you are really interested in working at Amazon, you must be calm and patient. Don't take it personal. They already know the loop holes in their hiring process. That's why they invite over people even if they have been rejected before. I have some friends at amazon. They have a joke that even Jeff Bezos may not be hired if he applies in disguise. :)