Hello Leetcode community,

I am a 2024 graduate from a tier 3/4 college, with 7 months of internship experience at a service-based startup. I have applied to three jobs on the Amazon career site:

Software Dev Engineer I, Amazon University Talent Acquisition  
Job ID: 2811598, Applied: Oct 23, 2024  

Software Dev Engineer I, Amazon University Talent Acquisition  
Job ID: 2811224, Applied: Oct 23, 2024  

Software Dev Engineer, Amazon University Talent Acquisition  
Job ID: 2836867, Applied: Dec 19, 2024  

After applying, I received an online assessment (3-4 hours) during the first week of January 2025. I solved both DSA questions in around 40-50 minutes and also completed the work style and other parts of the assessment.

On January 15, 2025, I received an email for my first-round interview scheduled for January 20, 2025. I tried to reschedule the interview by emailing the same person who sent the invitation and also messaging the recruiter on LinkedIn, but I received no response. As a result, I attended the interview on the original date.

Five days ago, I received an email with the subject: "Amazon || Update: SDE Full-Time Opportunity." In the email, they mentioned: "Unfortunately, we are unable to move forward with your candidature at this time," but they did not mention any job ID or further details.

Today, when I visited the Amazon jobs website, I found the following:

Software Dev Engineer I, Amazon University Talent Acquisition  
Job ID: 2811598, Applied: Oct 23, 2024  
Status: We’re not taking new applications for this job right now, but don’t worry—we still have yours. Use ‘Role details’ to view the job description.

Software Dev Engineer I, Amazon University Talent Acquisition  
Job ID: 2811224, Applied: Oct 23, 2024  
Status: No status change, under consideration.

Software Dev Engineer, Amazon University Talent Acquisition  
Job ID: 2836867, Applied: Dec 19, 2024  
Status: No status change, under consideration.

I am now assuming I have been rejected but still want to confirm this.

Can anyone, or any Amazon employee, tell me (after reading my interview experience below) if there is any chance I might get the next interview?

My Interview Experience:

The interview started with introductions, and we directly jumped to the DSA question.

1st Question: Connect Nodes at Same Level on GFG
It was exactly the same question, but in my case, it was nextLeft instead of nextRight.

Although I have solved many problems on Leetcode, I have only done basic tree problems (like reorder, post-order, and in-order), so I couldn’t solve this one. I explained that it would use BFS, and the recruiter asked if I knew BFS. I said yes, it’s level order traversal, and it uses a queue data structure.
The interviewer then said, “Okay, try to solve it,” and I asked for 5 minutes, but I still couldn’t solve it. The interviewer then asked, “What sorting algorithms do you know?” I said selection sort and merge sort. The interviewer said, “Okay, then implement selection sort.” I implemented it, and then he asked me about time complexity (TC) and space complexity (SC). I said the TC is O(n^2), as for each i, it will run n, then n-1, then n-2, ... 3, 2, 1, so it will be O(n^2). For space complexity, I said O(1) (constant), but I mistakenly said O(log(n)) before correcting myself to O(1).

Then the interviewer said, “Okay, now tell me about merge sort.” I explained it with an example and told him how it works by breaking it into subproblems, then merging from bottom to top.
He then said, “Okay, implement only the merge function,” so I implemented that.

After that, the interviewer asked me some leadership principle (LP) questions like:

• How would you learn new technologies?
• Have you gone through the codebase in your previous organization?
• Why did you choose that framework? Why not others?
• How would you approach learning new topics (advanced topics)?

At the end of the interview, the interviewer asked if I had any questions. I asked about the role of SDE-1 there, and he explained it to me in about 5 minutes. Then the interview ended.

The interview was very supportive, humble, and polite. The interviewer seemed satisfied with my answers to the leadership principle (LP) questions. However, when I couldn’t solve the tree-based question, I felt like the interviewer might have thought I didn’t have a strong knowledge of DSA. That’s why the interviewer suddenly asked me about sorting algorithms, which are very basic concepts of DSA. I believe that may have caused the interviewer to doubt my skills, which is why I think I got rejected.