An Amazon interview process that lasted an year

Yes you read that right. It took a year for me from the date I applied for Amazon and the till the time I received an offer. But it was all worth it in the end.

Status: 8 months in Service based MNC, 2021 Grad
Position: SDE-1 (L4) at Amazon
Location: Hyderabad, India
Date: March 3rd, 2022
Compensation: https://leetcode.com/discuss/compensation/1819575/Amazon-or-SDE-1-(L4)-or-Hyderabad

Application: - Mid February, 2021

• Applied through Amazon careers portal in Feb 2021. I have applied many times before also for internship and other roles. But this was the first time my resume was shortlisted. No referrals.
• The position I was shortlisted for had a preference for 6+ months of non internship experience candidates and I was not even graduated till then and only had internship experiences.
• But I went on with it because I just wanted to get an experience of how the test goes and all so that the next time I give the test after completing my graduation I am fully ready and already know what to expect.

Online Assessment - March 20th, 2021

• Got the assessment link through mail. It consisted of 2 parts.

1. Coding challenge (2 scenarios) and Coding approach (elaborate why you code the way you do) - 105 minutes
2. Work style survey - 15 minutes

• Coding question were:

1. Array based question - Solved fully.
2. DFS based question - 11/17 test cases passed.

Final Interviews (4 rounds)
I got a mail on 10th December, 2021 that I have cleared my online assessments and my 3 rounds of interviews were scheduled on 21st and 22nd of December.

Round 1 - December 21st, 2021

• The interviewer was a young SDE 1 and he started the interview with brief introduction of his and mine. Then we went on with the coding questions.

1. Array based DP - LC Hard
2. Heap related - LC Medium

• The first question he asked I had already encountered that during my preparation and was not able to solve that time also and ignored it thinking I will again come back to this question and see if I can solve. But that time never came.
• So, here in the interview I was like we are done. I cannot solve this question. But again a thought came up what worse can happen here. I will be rejected. Even if I try and didn’t solve I will be rejected, and even if I don't try I will be rejected. But there is a chance to solve it if I give it a shot. So, I started reading the question and thought of approaches. Gave a simple brute force approach. Now interviewer asked me what was going on in mind. I explained a way to him but I was not sure that it will work. What the interviewer did here was he kept on helping me whether I was on right track or not. I and went on solving the problem.
• To my surprise, I got the optimised solution, and the approach I though just needed little modification where interviewer helped me. He asked me questions like, why I chose this and that. That helped me to get to right approach. Now I was very confident because I passed a big hurdle.
• The next question I solved in like 10 minutes with optimum approach. Few minutes were left at the end. Some discussions went on about Leadership principles.
• In all this round went pretty well at the end. I was happy with my performance. The interviewer also seemed satisfied.

Round 2 - December 22nd, 2021

• The interviewer was SDE 2 and he also started with introductions of both of us. Then came the coding questions.

1. DFS related - LC Medium
2. Heap based - LC Hard

• I was able to solve both the questions completely and gave the optimum approach. Formatted the code nicely.
• At the end interviewer asked some LP based questions which I answered with a real story from my earlier experiences in college and internships.
• All went pretty smooth and this was the best round for me in the whole interview process till now.

Round 3 - December 22nd, 2021

• This round was taken by Hiring Manager. The interviewer was swapped at the last moment and the new guy didn't had any history about me. He asked me 10 minutes to went through my previous rounds and resume.
• At first the project discussions were there. He asked me about my best project and went very deep into architecture and optimisations. Asked me what more improvements can be done in this. Also wanted to know the scope of multithreading in here. I explained him all the things as I had made this project from scratch and knew every nook and corner of it. The discussions went on for 20-25 minutes. After that he asked me one coding question.

1. Binary Search based - LC Medium

• I solved it quite efficiently and he was happy with the approach. Now he asked to me some CS fundamentals. Questions relating to DBMS, OS, OOP etc. He asked me a LLD question.

1. Design a TATA car company's car class with two models Altroz and Nexon. Use OOP principles and design a high level overview.

• I took a while to do this as I wasn't prepared for LLD. But I managed to come up with a solution. The interviewer was neutral on this. So we moved ahead.
• Now he asked some LP based questions which I answered pretty nicely and he seemed satisfied with this.
• At the end he asked me if I had any questions. I asked two questions and the interview ended.
• This round went like 80-90% for me. Because I took some time for the Low Level Designing and was not very sure whether he was satisfied or not.

Round - 4 - February 22nd, 2022

• I got the call on 4th Jan that I have cleared first three rounds and next round is scheduled on 11th Jan. But it was later rescheduled to an unknown date. I kept on pinging the recruiter to give me a date and after some emails I got a new date of 1st March. But again as it went recruiter came up with a scheme that if I am flexible to give an interview at night 10pm then he will schedule my round with a US based SDM at an earlier date. I agreed to his terms as I wanted all this to end as soon as possible as it was quite delayed already.
• So now I had an interview with a foreigner on 22nd February 2022 at 9:30 pm IST. He started the round directly with one of my projects. Asked me a few questions about the same. After that he asked quite a few LP based questions. I answered them all. Now he gave me a coding question to solve.

1. Heap based - LC Hard

• Asked to me give two approaches. I gave one brute force and one optimised one. He was quite satisfied with this and the interview ended by me asking few questions that I had regarding Amazon.
• The round went quite pretty well. Interviewer was very much satisfied with the answers to his questions.

Offer

• On 28th February 2022, I got the call from recruiter about my selection. She asked me some details for background check and told me that they will be rolling out an offer soon.
• On 2nd March 2022, the recruiter called me regarding salary discussions. The initial offer she gave was way beyond my expectations and straightaway agreed to that.
• 3rd March 2022, I received the offer, I accepted it, ofc:)

Do's and Don't

• Don't give up. Keep on grinding, your day will definetely come, and when it comes you should be prepared to grab it with both hands.
• Never underestimate the Behavioural questions. I got the edge in the interview due to my communication skills. Everyone will solve the coding question. But CP is not everything. Build your communication skills, work on CS fundamentals.
• Don't mug up the most asked questions. Try to get the logic behind it. I got the questions that were similar to most asked ones but they changed the questions. So you should be clear with your concepts.
• Solve the company specific questions at least. Build a consistency in your preparations. Even if you are solving only one question everyday. Take part in contests, as it will prepare you for time bound interviews.
• Nobody is by born talented. Work hard in right direction and anybody can crack any exam or interviews.
• Always be confident in your interview even if you missed some question. Leave it there and focus on the next questions. Never show regret of not solving something on your face. Just be confident and interviewer will help you in solving the questions but you gotta give it a try for him to help you.

Preparation Strategy

• I took part in LC contests regulary. Mostly I was able to solve 2/4 questions. Some days it went 3/4. But I kept my consistency.
• If I stuck on some question, I look for solution and logic in discuss section. Tried to understand the approach. Then solved similar questions with that approach by myself. This way I built my logic.
• I started my preparation after my OA but it went on and off till November. But after that I started with full on preparations.
• Took LC premium subscription when I got my interview schedule. Practiced company specific questions. Even though I solve a question successfully I look for the solution as to what other approaches are there.
• I solve a problem the way I will do in a interview. Formatted the code with comments, calculate the time and space complexity etc.
• There were some questions that I was not able to understand even by looking at the solution. So for that I see youtube videos. And still if I don't get that things, I leave it there and come back to it again after some days.
• I always kept a pen and paper with me. If I find some question hard to solve, I write two three examples on paper and see if there is some pattern in that. And from this I build up my logic. I also check what data structure we can use here. This helps to narrow down possibilities.

LP questions

• I prepared for LP from the below link. What I did was prepared stories in STAR approach for the situations in the given link. Don't create a fake story, the interviewer will catch you in a minute. Even if you don’t have a story for particular incident then just be honest with them. Some stories will fit in for more than one situations. So I didn't specifically mapped the stories with LP's but had the incidents of my life jotted down so that I can recall in the interview.
• https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-experience/1149636/Amazon-LPs-Compiled

Leetcode community has helped me a lot in getting this offer. I went through plenty of interview experiences to know what to expect in a real interview. Because of LC only I was able to clear all the interviews in my first attempt. Thank you.

Work hard in right direction and rest everything will follow.