During my 5 years at Amazon, I participated in hundreds of Product Manager interviews, mostly as the hiring manager. Before Amazon, I was a Product Manager at two startups that scaled from 30 to 300 and a lot of my time was spent recruiting and interviewing. Here are my tips to get through the recruitment process for the Product Manager role at Amazon.
Typically, Amazon does not hire associate level Product Managers. Product Managers are typically hired at Senior Product Manager, Level 6. Also, Amazon levels tend to be at least one level down from the industry which means that a Director in a smaller company might be hired as a Senior Product Manager at Amazon. Indeed, I myself went from Senior Director with a startup to Senior Product Manager when I first joined AWS, before progressing to Senior Manager, Level 7.
As an AWS hiring manager in Dublin, Ireland, I saw many resumes with experience in roles like Product Owner and Project Manager. These candidates typically failed the interview process at AWS because the Product Manager role is so broad and demanding. Often resumes stated the candidate's role as Product Manager but the responsibilities and achievements matched a Product Owner role. These resumes would pass the recruiters who usually didn’t know the difference but I would immediately dismiss a resume that I labeled Product Owner.
In short, Amazon is not the company to become a Product Manager. I highly recommend taking your first Product Manager role somewhere else to gain experience and later try applying to Amazon. However, there is an alternative path which is to take an MBA and apply for a Product Manager internship with Amazon. This is a feasible path, particularly if you have a strong technical background which is highly valued by AWS. Product Management interns are offered full-time roles that typically start at Senior Product Manager, depending on the candidate's level of experience and performance during the internship.
I've seen some shockingly bad resumes. Please run the spell checker over the text and get somebody who is a native English speaker to review your resume for word choice, phrasing and grammar mistakes. I’ve seen so many formats, colours, pictures etc etc. All I look for is a neat, clear, succinct presentation of the facts. I don’t need to know your sex, phone number, address, family status, what you look like, the letters you put after your name, the name of your band or any other irrelevant details. I just need to know whether you have experience of doing the job I’m hiring for?
Top tip. Get someone who works at Amazon to submit your resume. There is some benefit in being labeled as an employee referral and if you know the person they can also message the recruiter for updates. Amazon is a well oiled machine but people are human and people take holidays, so things can get delayed for basic reasons. Having an advocate on the inside is a big advantage for your application.
You made it past the resume review and now you have a phone screen. At Amazon, the phone screen is typically run by a Senior Manager, Level 7. This makes the phone screen a high bar to overcome. You need to do your homework on the team and the product. The interviewer is looking for real examples from your experience where you have demonstrated the Amazon leadership principles. You need to raise the bar on at least one leadership principle. Amazon interviewers use the STAR framework - Situation, Task, Action and Result. This means that whatever examples you give you need to follow this format when responding. You should start at the beginning, what company and role did the example take place? What was your role?
Candidates who are nervous tend to talk too much and too fast, without pausing. The interview is a dialogue not a monologue. Be self aware of whether you are rambling or dominating the discussion. Watch for the signs that your interviewer is trying to slow things down or ask a question. If you are talking too much then pause and ask a question. Does this make sense? Is this answering your question? Add deliberate pauses after each step of the STAR framework and check in with the interviewer. The interviewer will typically have a list of questions for each stage of STAR. You will often only have the opportunity to give one example for the entire interview, so pick a good example.
If successful, the next stage is the full interview loop. If you have been invited to the loop you are in serious contention for the role. The loop consists of the hiring manager, a bar raiser and a number of other members of the team. Typically, for a Product Manager - Technical role there will be an engineering manager covering the technical aspects. There will probably be 5-7 interviews in total and the loop will last for most of the day. If possible you should split the interviews over two days to avoid fatigue. The recruiter will hate this but they can do it.
The interviews on the loop also follow the STAR format. However, this time the interviewers are focusing on specific Amazon leadership principles. For example, the hiring manager might focus on Think Big and Disagree and Commit. The questions will relate specifically to eliciting responses that demonstrate the leadership principles the interviewer has been assigned. In addition to the leadership principles, the loop will likely also cover some functional skills. For the Product Manager role these functional skills include - Tech Skills, Feature Definition, Roadmap Planning and Pricing. Yes, pricing is the role of the product Manager at AWS. However, not everyone has pricing experience. If that is you then you need to excel at some of the other leadership principles or functional skills.
When interviewing for Product Manager - Technical role, you will be tested on tech skills by an engineer. The official bar is high. However, I’m satisfied when you can describe the systems behind the products you have launched. You need to understand the technical architecture of the solution, the scale bottlenecks and technology choices. You will not be asked to code or write algorithms.
If you don’t know something just admit it. Candidates can often be really strong on Deliver Results but weak on Think Big or vice versa and this can be ok because you raise the bar on something and the area for development can be coached. However, Earns Trust is a guaranteed way to fail as it is not considered a principle that can be coached. Don’t try to fake it.
In addition to the leadership principles and functional skills, the interview is an opportunity for the loop to test your communication skills. Be succinct, stick to the question and avoid excessive detail when not prompted to go there. The hiring manager will often request an example of writing to test your written communication. Your writing should also be clear, concise, structured and follow a logical flow just as your verbal responses follow STAR. Clarity of thought is highly valued throughout the process.
The last part of STAR is results. You need to describe how you defined success for the thing you worked on. Amazon is metrics driven so you should describe the metrics you defined and how the metrics changed.
When the interview is remote, I've noticed that some candidates compile examples into a document in STAR format. Then during the interview, I can hear the candidate scrolling through reams of examples to pick the right pre prepared example. Don't do this. Rehearsal and preparation is good but you goal is to have a dialogue. Reading off a script is unnatural and often you find yourself with no ideal match to the question and whilst your answer is flawlessly scripted it is missing the mark. In the real world, you need to think on your feet.
I always leave time for the candidate to answer questions at the end of the interview. I recommend having some ready and asking them. If people don’t ask questions it makes me think you aren’t interested or you think that you have already failed.
If all of this sounds impossible, or foreign, then you might not be ready for Amazon. Perhaps you need to find an opportunity to build more experience somewhere else and come back later? Many people will reapply multiple times over many years. I like to see experience with startups because with small companies Product Managers have broad responsibility which is closer to the Amazon experience.
Good luck!
Comments