Amazon Leadership Principles

Amazon Leadership Principles: Questions and Interview Tips

Get prepared for your Amazon interview by studying their 14 Leadership Principles

Levels.fyi · September 24, 2022

https://www.levels.fyi/blog/amazon-leadership-principles.html

It isn’t surprising that getting a job at one of the big tech companies like Amazon, Google, or Facebook can present quite a challenge. The interviews for these companies have become almost as famous as the companies themselves.

One of the most significant differences between interviewing at Amazon and other FAANG companies lies in their approach to behavioral interview questions. Namely, Amazon has created the following 16 Amazon Leadership Principles.

These principles and the associated questions are designed to investigate your professional background and your ability to handle workplace situations. At Levels.fyi, we know how these may be difficult to improvise on the spot, so it is wise to prepare for them ahead of time. Read on for some of Amazon Leadership Principles questions, sample answers to them, and interview tips.

Update (June 2023): Chat with former Amazon employees & recruiters that can review your resume, help negotiate your offer or prepare for behavioral & technical interviews!

What are the Amazon Leadership Principles?

The Amazon Leadership Principles describe 16 fundamental values that govern the conduct of the company and its employees. The company states that these values are implemented in day-to-day operations and believes in hiring people who behave by these principles.

These qualities are often tested during the hiring process. They are crucial to know if you are preparing for an interview with Amazon and want to become an excellent candidate.

“We obviously hire based on the principles. We give both positive and negative feedback, which references the principles. We are encouraged to be aware of our own successes and failures in relation to the leadership principles,” says Dave Anderson, Head of Technology at Bezos Academy and a former Director/GM at Amazon.

The good news is that you don’t have to memorize all 16 Amazon Leadership Principles to get ready for an interview. Instead, Amazon tests applicants on the qualities that are most relevant to the position.

Here are the 16 Amazon Leadership Principles and some essential details to remember:

1. Customer Obsession - Successful leaders always start with the customer and work their way backward. They work hard to earn and maintain customer trust, and even though they pay attention to competitors, customers are always the priority.
2. Ownership - Leaders think long-term and prioritize long-term value over short-term success. They are owners, and they act on behalf of the company, not just themselves or their own team.
3. Invent and Simplify - Leaders always seek ways to simplify and always require invention and innovation from their teams. Their thinking has no limits, and they always search for new ideas from everywhere. And, as they try new things, they expect to be sometimes misunderstood.
4. Are Right, a Lot - Leaders are right most of the time. They possess good instincts and strong judgment, which enables them to seek diverse perspectives.
5. Learn and Be Curious - Leaders always seek ways to improve themselves and never stop learning. They are curious about new opportunities and aren’t afraid to explore the unknown.
6. Hire and Develop the Best - Every hire and promotion decision made by leaders raises the performance level. Leaders recognize talent and are willing to support them in their development. They invest their time into coaching and mentoring others.
7. Insist on the Highest Standards - Leaders are continually raising the bar of their standards and motivate their teams to deliver high-quality services, products, and processes. Leaders make sure that problems are fixed and defects never get sent down the line.
8. Think Big - Leaders think differently and envisage a bold direction that inspires outstanding results. They also expertly partake in calculated risk-taking. They think outside of the box to serve customers and achieve a significant impact.
9. Bias for Action - In business, speed matters. Many actions and decisions are reversible and do not require extensive study. They have a bias for action with long-term gains in mind.
10. Frugality - Leaders find ways to accomplish more with less and maximize profit. They take constraints and turn them into self-sufficiency, resourcefulness, and invention.
11. Earn Trust - Leaders speak candidly, listen attentively, and treat others respectfully. They aren’t afraid to be self-critical in front of others and benchmark themselves only against the best.
12. Dive Deep - Leaders focus on the details, work at all levels, and audit frequently.
13. Have Backbone; Disagree, and Commit - Leaders aren’t afraid to speak up and challenge decisions in a respectful way whenever they disagree. They do not compromise, even in a challenging environment. And once the team finalizes a decision, these leaders fully commit to it.
14. Deliver Results - Leaders need to focus on the critical things in their work and deliver quality results promptly. No matter what, they overcome obstacles and never settle.
15. Strive to be Earth’s Best Employer - [Update: Added in 2021] Leaders work every day to create a safer, more productive, higher performing, more diverse, and more just work environment. They lead with empathy, have fun at work, and make it easy for others to have fun. Leaders ask themselves: Are my fellow employees growing? Are they empowered? Are they ready for what’s next? Leaders have a vision for and commitment to their employees’ personal success, whether that be at Amazon or elsewhere.
16. Success and Scale Bring Broad Responsibility - [Update: Added in 2021] We started in a garage, but we’re not there anymore. We are big, we impact the world, and we are far from perfect. We must be humble and thoughtful about even the secondary effects of our actions. Our local communities, planet, and future generations need us to be better every day. We must begin each day with a determination to make better, do better, and be better for our customers, our employees, our partners, and the world at large. And we must end every day knowing we can do even more tomorrow. Leaders create more than they consume and always leave things better than how they found them.

Examples of Amazon Leadership Principles Questions

Here are some examples of Leadership Principles questions you can expect:

1 Questions on “Customer Obsession”:

1. Who was your most difficult customer?
2. Tell me about a time when you didn’t meet customer expectations. What happened, and how did you deal with the situation?
3. How do you go about prioritizing customer needs when you are dealing with a large number of customers?

2 Questions on “Ownership”:

1. Tell me about a time when you took on a task that was beyond your job responsibilities.
2. Tell me about a time when you had to work on a task with unclear responsibilities.
3. Tell me about a time when you showed an initiative to work on a challenging project.

3 Questions on “Invent and Simplify”:

1. Describe a time when you found a simple solution to a complex problem.
2. Tell me about a time when you invented something.
3. Tell me about a time when you tried to simplify a process but failed. What would you have done differently?

4 Questions on “Are Right, a Lot”:

1. Tell me about a time when you effectively used your judgment to solve a problem.
2. Tell me about a time when you had to work with insufficient information or incomplete data.
3. Tell me about a time when you were wrong.

5 Questions on “Learn and Be Curious”:

1. Tell me about an important lesson you learned over the past year.
2. Tell me about a situation or experience you went through that changed your way of thinking.
3. Tell me about a time when you made a smarter decision with the help of your curiosity.

6 Questions on “Hire and Develop the Best”:

1. Tell me about a time when you mentored someone.
2. Tell me about a time when you made a bad hire. When did you figure it out, and what did you do?
3. What qualities do you look for in potential candidates when making hiring decisions?

7 Questions on “Insist on the Highest Standards”:

1. Tell me about a time when you were dissatisfied with the quality of a project at work. What did you do to improve it?
2. Tell me about a time when you motivated others to go above and beyond.
3. Describe a situation when you couldn’t meet your standards and expectations on a task.

8 Questions on “Think Big”:

1. Tell me about your most significant professional achievement.
2. Tell me about a time when you had to make a bold and challenging decision.
3. Tell me about a time when your vision led to a great impact.

9 Questions on “Bias for Action”:

1. Provide an example of when you took a calculated risk.
2. Describe a situation when you took the initiative to correct a problem or a mistake rather than waiting for someone else to do it.
3. Tell me about a time when you required some information from somebody else, but they weren’t responsive. What did you do?

10 Questions on “Frugality”:

1. Describe a time when you had to rely on yourself to complete a task.
2. Tell me about a time when you had to be frugal.
3. Tell me about a time when you had to rely on yourself to complete a project.

11 Questions on “Earn Trust”:

1. Describe a time when you had to speak up in a difficult or uncomfortable environment.
2. What would you do to gain the trust of your team?
3. Tell me about a time when you had to tell a harsh truth to someone.

12 Questions on “Dive Deep”:

1. Tell me about the most complicated problem you’ve had to deal with.
2. Give me an example of when you utilized in-depth data to develop a solution.
3. Tell me about something that you have learned in your role.

13 Questions on “Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit”:

1. Describe a time when you disagreed with the approach of a team member. What did you do?
2. Give me an example of something you believe in that nobody else does.
3. Tell me about an unpopular decision of yours.

14 Questions on “Deliver Results”:

1. Describe the most challenging situation in your life and how you handled it.
2. Give an example of a time when you had to handle a variety of assignments. What was the outcome?
3. Tell me about a time when your team gave up on something, but you pushed them to deliver results.

15 Questions on “Strive to be Earth’s Best Employer”:

1. When was the last time you built a team? What did you consider when assembling it together?
2. Give an example of a time when you developed the careers of people on your team.
3. How have you managed varying strengths and weaknesses of members in your team?

16 Questions on “Success and Scale Bring Broad Responsibility”:

1. Describe a moral or ethical dilemma you’ve faced in the workplace. How did you handle it?
2. Give an example of a time when you’ve left a project in a better position than you’ve found it.
3. What’s the largest impact you’ve had on your environment?

Structuring Your Answers to Behavioral Interview Questions

Interview preparation tips

When preparing for your Amazon interview, take the time to study the Amazon Leadership Principles questions, and develop two stories that demonstrate each of them. No, you don’t need to think about answers to 28 questions. Some of these stories may tackle different leadership principles at once.

Your stories need to demonstrate the leadership principles and boundless curiosity to improve yourself on the job.

However, even if you have a good story to tell, your interviewer won’t appreciate unstructured meandering anecdotes. They want your ideas and answers to the Amazon Leadership Principles questions to be concise and precise while still showing a depth of understanding and superior knowledge of your expertise.

There are two methods of answering behavioral interview questions in a succinct yet complete way: STAR and CAR.

Whatever method you choose, make sure that you contextualize the results of your actions within a closed-loop thinking framework. In other words, you should elaborate upon the effects of your actions on other processes and the overall system within which your team operates. Whether you’re an engineer or a marketer, you need to emphasize your leadership skills and bold vision in the face of adversity.

STAR Method

STAR stands for “Situation - Task - Action - Results”.

For example, in behavioral interview questions like this, you could easily employ the STAR method for a complete answer:

“Tell me about a time when you had to make a decision, which included short-term sacrifices for longer-term goals.”

Situation. Begin by briefly talking about the context and situation:

“I was once managing a website, and it suddenly started showing slow performance due to a mistake on our side that went unnoticed for a long time. As a project manager, I took full responsibility and worked with the engineering team to resolve the issue promptly.”

Task - Elaborate on the necessary tasks involved in the resolution of a situation:

“This mistake has shown me how important it is to monitor non-functional requirements in addition to the development of new features, on which I was spending most of my time.”

Action - Describe all the steps you took to complete the above tasks:

“After fixing the issue, I made sure that such mistake doesn’t happen again: I have implemented a good application management tool and set up to receive email alerts when website behavior exceeds set SLAs or thresholds. I spent the time to learn the tool myself to analyze previous issues further.”

Results - Talk about the consequences or outcome of the situation and your actions:

“With these actions, we were able to have consistent page load times under 3 seconds. I also shared my experience with other project managers in the team through a brown bag presentation to prevent the situation from happening again.”

CAR Method

The CAR technique of answering Amazon Leadership Principles interview questions is very similar to STAR.

CAR stands for “Context - Action - Result”.

Let’s take a look at this Amazon Leadership Principles question:

“Tell me about a time when you had to deliver results in the face of challenges.”

Following the CAR method, you would answer the following way:

Context - Set the scene and describe the situation of a relevant example from your past experiences:

“In my previous employment, the sales division has been experiencing decreasing sales. I was invited to help reverse the situation. The biggest challenge I faced was to manage the team effectively so that they can not only meet but exceed their sales targets.”

Action - Explain in detail what action you took, your steps, and the rationale behind it:

“Over a period of six months, I have implemented several initiatives, such as setting measurable sales targets for each individual, holding weekly sales meetings, and implementing a sales training program.”

Result - Talk about the outcome of your action in detail:

“In the first quarter, we increased sales by 60% and exceeded sales targets by 25%. We continued to increase our sales throughout the next year.”

14 Amazon Interview Questions on Leadership Principles To Prepare in 2025

https://www.kraftshala.com/blog/amazon-interview-questions/

“It would be impossible to produce results in an environment as dynamic as the Internet without extraordinary people… Setting the bar high in our approach to hiring has been and will continue to be, the single most important element of Amazon.com’s success.” – Jeff Bezos’ letter to shareholders in 1998, just four years after Amazon was founded already explains why guarding the leadership principles is so critical for Amazon.

The above statement perfectly captures Amazon’s hiring philosophy in a nutshell. Amazon does not hire ordinary. It hires people who ‘Raise the Bar’. The company believes that every new employee should increase the average level of productivity on whichever team they join, ensuring that the company’s standards get higher and higher as time goes on. This implies that every new person hired through the Amazon interview process should be smarter, better, and more qualified than 50% of the people currently in the role. To ensure that this statement holds true, Amazon trains a selected few of its employees to be ‘Bar Raisers’ in the Amazon interview process. There is no separate thing as ‘the bar raiser interview questions’. Essentially, these Amazon employees take on a second unpaid job as candidate evaluators in the interview process.

Apart from taking one of the interviews, the primary job of a Bar Raiser is to ensure that for each position and level, every candidate is being interviewed across a shared set of competencies i.e. the 14 Amazon leadership principles (more about them in a while).

The Bar Raisers also help discover hidden hiring motives, like a severe near-term need, and force interviewers to reconsider their feedback in different contexts. Bar Raisers are known not to jump from one question to another, but to savour hearing every relevant detail of your story in the Amazon interview process.

Key Takeaways from The Blog:

This blog is designed to help you crack the Amazon interview every person has once hoped to crack. Typically, Amazon has designed their interview in such a way that the interview questions are based on the pillars that have built Amazon into what it is today: The 14 Amazon Leadership Principles. Now, the blog will take you through:

1. A Quick Overview of What Happens During Amazon’s Interview Process
2. The 14 Amazon Leadership Principles
3. Amazon’s Interview Questions Based on the Leadership Principles An Advice at the End

Quick Overview of What Happens During Amazon’s Interview Process

The Amazon Interview Experience usually comprises about four to six interviews, wherein at least one interviewer is a bar raiser. Each interviewer covers a few of the 14 Amazon leadership principles so that in its entirety, the candidate is judged on each principle during the process. In addition, behavioral interview questions are asked to check if the candidate has manifested these 14 Amazon leadership principles in the past. As stated earlier, these are the most important filters that they use to select candidates in the Amazon interview process.

Amazon strongly believes that with the expansion rate of the company, the only way they can keep the company culture alive is by ferociously guarding the 14 Amazon Leadership Principles. Therefore, the candidates are expected to fulfill the ‘minimum expectation’ on all 14 Amazon leadership principles and be ‘outstanding’ on at least one of them. If even one of the Bar Raisers has an objection to Amazon hiring the candidate, they can simply veto the application, and the interview process ends there.

As Jeff Bezos rightfully says,

“Our Leadership Principles aren’t just a pretty inspirational wall hanging. These Principles work hard, just like we do. Amazonians use them every day, whether they’re discussing ideas for new projects, deciding on the best solution for a customer’s problem, or interviewing candidates. It’s just one of the things that makes Amazon peculiar.”

So, What Are the 14 Amazon Leadership Principles?

Let’s name the leadership principles that have kept Amazon together over the years:

1. Customer Obsession
2. Ownership
3. Invent and Simplify
4. Are Right, A Lot
5. Learn and Be Curious
6. Hire and Develop The Best
7. Insist on the Highest Standards
8. Think Big
9. Bias for Action
10. Frugality
11. Earn Trust
12. Dive Deep
13. Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit
14. Deliver Results

Now, Let’s Get the Amazon Interview Questions You’ll Be Asked

Having interviewed Amazon recruiters and candidates, we have collated a brief list of interview questions that are used in Amazon interviews to judge candidates on each of these 14 leadership principles. Please note that the interview questions below are by no means exhaustive and are just indicative of the space that your Amazon interview questions would be penetrating into. You can use this list of interview questions to work on your laundry list of experiences and pick out your star stories: the stories that best manifest the Amazon leadership principles you want to highlight.

Understand that every part of the Amazon Interview process has been created to systematically outline leadership traits, understand their importance to you, and the degree of applicability of these 14 Amazon Leadership principles in your life experiences. The candidates applying for AWS roles should also make note that these 14 principles are also the AWS leadership principles, and it would be critical for their candidature to pay heed to these.

Choose a few of these leadership principles that mean the most to you and focus on them in an obvious way. Speak in them. Speak to them. Mention them in your stories.

1. Amazon Leadership Principle – Customer Obsession

Leaders start with the customer and work backward. They work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust. Although leaders pay attention to competitors, they obsess over customers. Amazon Interview Questions on The Principle “Customer Obsession” Who was your most challenging customer? Give me an example of a time when you did not meet a client’s expectations. What happened, and how did you attempt to rectify the situation?

When you’re working with a large number of customers, it’s tricky to deliver excellent service to them all. So how do you go about prioritizing your customers’ needs?

Tell the story of the last time you had to apologize to someone.

2. Amazon Leadership Principle – Ownership

Leaders are owners. They think long-term and don’t sacrifice long-term value for short-term results. They act on behalf of the entire company beyond just their team. They never say That’s not my job.

Amazon Interview Questions on The Principle “Ownership”

Tell me about a time when you had to leave a task unfinished. Tell me about a time when you had to work on a project with unclear responsibilities.

3. Amazon Leadership Principle – Invent and Simplify

Leaders expect and require innovation and invention from their teams and always find ways to simplify. They are externally aware, look for new ideas from everywhere, and are not limited by “not invented here”. As we do new things, we accept that we may be misunderstood for long periods.

Amazon Interview Questions on The Principle “Invent and Simplify”

Tell me about a time when you gave a simple solution to a complex problem. Tell me about a time when you invented something.

Now, reverse marketing is the process by which companies encourage customers to actively seek An excellent example of this is the Amazon flywheel.

Amazon Flywheel is a beautiful demonstration of how a business model can be constructed to be a self-perpetuating machine. You feed any part of the Amazon flywheel and the entire business model gets benefited. It is a simple but brilliant example of Invent & Simplify.

4. Amazon Leadership Principle – Are Right, A Lot

Leaders are right, a lot. They have strong judgment and good instincts. They seek diverse perspectives and work to disconfirm their beliefs.

Amazon Interview Questions on The Principle “Are Right, A Lot”

Tell me about a time when you were wrong. Tell me about a time when you had to work with incomplete data or information.

5. Amazon Leadership Principle – Learn and Be Curious

Leaders are never done learning and consistently seek to improve themselves. They are curious about new possibilities and act to explore them.

Amazon Interview Questions on The Principle “Learn and Be Curious”

Tell me about a time when you influenced a change by only asking questions. Tell me about a time when you solved a problem through superior knowledge or observation.

6. Amazon Leadership Principle – Hire and Develop The Best

Leaders are responsible for raising the performance bar with every hire and promotion. They recognize exceptional talent and will move them throughout the organization. Leaders develop leaders and take their role in coaching others seriously. We work on behalf of our people to invent mechanisms for development like Career Choice.

Amazon Interview Questions on The Principle “Hire and Develop The Best”

Tell me about a time when you mentored someone. Tell me about a time when you made a wrong hire. When did you figure it out, and what did you do?

7. Amazon Leadership Principle – Insist on the Highest Standards

Leaders have relentlessly high standards – many people may think these standards are unreasonably high. However, leaders are continually raising the bar and driving their teams to deliver high-quality products, services, and processes. In addition, leaders ensure that defects do not get sent down the line and that problems are fixed, so they stay fixed.

Amazon Interview Questions on The Principle “Insist on the Highest Standards”

Tell me about a time when you couldn’t meet your expectations on a project. Tell me about a time when a team member didn’t meet your expectations on a project.

8. Amazon Leadership Principle – Think Big

Thinking small is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Instead, leaders create and communicate a bold direction that inspires results. They think differently and look around corners for ways to serve customers.

Amazon Interview Questions on The Principle “Think Big”

Tell me about your proudest professional achievement. Tell me about a time when you went way beyond the scope of the project and delivered.

9. Amazon Leadership Principle – Bias for Action

Speed matters in business. Many decisions and actions are reversible and do not need extensive study. We value calculated risk-taking.

Amazon Interview Questions on The Principle “Bias for Action”

Describe a time when you saw some problem and took the initiative to correct it rather than waiting for someone else to do it. Tell me about a time when you took a calculated risk.

Tell me about a time you needed to get information from someone who wasn’t very responsive. What did you do?

10. Amazon Leadership Principle – Frugality

Accomplish more with less. Constraints breed resourcefulness, self-sufficiency, and invention. There are no extra points for growing headcount, budget size, or fixed expenses.

Amazon Interview Questions on The Principle “Frugality”

Tell me about a time when you had to work with limited time or resources.

11. Amazon Leadership Principle – Earn Trust

Leaders listen attentively, speak candidly, and treat others respectfully. They are vocally self-critical, even when doing so is awkward or embarrassing. Leaders do not believe their or their team’s body odor smells of perfume. Instead, they benchmark themselves and their teams against the best.

Amazon Interview Questions on The Principle “Earn Trust”

What would you do if you found out that your closest friend at work was stealing? Tell me about a time when you had to tell someone a harsh truth.

12. Amazon Leadership Principle – Dive Deep

Leaders operate at all levels, stay connected to the details, audit frequently, and are skeptical when metrics and anecdotes differ. No task is beneath them.

Amazon Interview Questions on The Principle “Dive Deep”

Give me two examples of when you did more than what was required in any job experience.Tell me about something that you learned recently in your role.

13. Amazon Leadership Principle – Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit

Leaders are obligated to respectfully challenge decisions when they disagree, even when doing so is uncomfortable or exhausting. Leaders have conviction and are tenacious. They do not compromise for the sake of social cohesion. Once a decision is determined, they commit wholly.

Amazon Interview Questions on The Principle “Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit”

Tell me about a time when you did not accept the status quo.Tell me about an unpopular decision of yours.

Tell me about a time when you had to step up and disagree with a team member’s approach.

If your direct manager was instructing you to do something you disagreed with, how would you handle it?

14. Amazon Leadership Principle – Deliver Results

Leaders focus on the crucial inputs for their business and deliver them with the right quality and timely fashion. Despite setbacks, they rise to the occasion and never settle.

Amazon Interview Questions on The Principle “Deliver Results”

By providing an example, tell me when you have had to handle a variety of assignments. Describe the results.What is the most challenging situation you have ever faced in your life? How did you handle it?

Give me an example of a time when you were 75% of the way through a project, and you had to pivot strategy–how were you able to make that into a success story?

Concluding…

Our parting advice is that you do not try to game the Amazon interview process, i.e. tell them what you think they want to hear. Do not invent stories to fit the image you want to showcase. That attitude, more often than not, makes the candidate seem inconsistent or ‘unreal’. But most importantly, by doing so, you lose out on a very critical opportunity: to showcase the real you.

Every story that you’d ever need is already there in your laundry list. What is required is to understand yourself better and craft these stories by storytelling in such a way that it brings out your leadership principles and achievements.

How to interview at Amazon using the Amazon leadership principles

https://www.interviewgenie.com/blog/how-to-interview-at-amazon-with-leadership-principles

You’re interviewing at Amazon soon, and you know you need to do well in your interview to get the job.

You’ve practiced answers to common interview questions and read the job description and everything you can find about the company. You think you’re ready. Are you?

You might be ready for the interview if you’ve practiced answering questions with the Amazon leadership principles.

Amazon’s Leadership Principles in Interviews

What are Amazon’s leadership principles? They are a set of 16 concepts that Amazon uses as a mission statement.

Why are the leadership principles important for interviews?

After all, most companies have mission statements but they basically ignore them.

Because the leadership principles are used to ask questions in every interview at Amazon

What do you mean the principles “are used” to ask questions in an interview?

In a typical Amazon interview:

You may be asked a question like this,“Tell me about a time when you demonstrated customer obsession?” (Customer obsession is one of the 16 principles.)

Easy question?

Now, maybe this seems like an easy question. If you deal with customers in your daily work it probably will be easy for you.

Not so easy questions

But what if they ask you this, “Tell me about a time you had to deal with a difficult customer.” This one is the same question from a different angle.

What about “Tell me about a time you went above and beyond.” This question doesn’t use the words “ownership” so you might not realize it’s one of the leadership principle questions or you might not know which principle it’s referring to.

Or what if they ask you, “How do you resonate with the principle, ‘Are right, a lot’?” If you haven’t thought about this principle will you be able to answer this?

How to answer interview questions with Amazon leadership principles

1. Take them seriously

A few of these principles sound silly to me (dive deep!). And they may sound silly to you too. Too bad. Your interviewer doesn’t think they’re silly. Amazon employees accept these as part of their culture. If you want the job, you need to take them seriously.

I know many companies have mission statements that they don’t take seriously, but Amazon is different.

I just helped a client prepare for an Amazon interview and he laughed at some of the principles, but then he stopped laughing and prepared answers.

Yes, he got the job (after a 1.5 hour interview where the interviewer asked him ONLY questions with the principles — he said she asked him for an incredible level of detail in each answer).

2. Read the leadership principles carefully

Some of these are not easy to understand (“Are right, a lot” is one that confuses people).

I advise you to spend some time thinking about them. If you don’t read the leadership principles and think about them before you go into the interview, you may have trouble.

3. Memorize them

What? Why?

Two popular interview questions:

“Which Amazon leadership principle do you resonate most with?”

And, “What do you think the seventeenth principle should be?”

They’re not going to write them on the whiteboard for you to choose from.

4. Understand how interviews are evaluated

You must incorporate the principles into your responses because your responses are evaluated and you are rated based on how well you performed according to the leadership principles.

I don’t understand. Is every question going to be about the principles?

You will probably get a mix of technical questions, if applicable, basic/introductory questions, like “Why do you want to work at Amazon?,” questions about your resume/skills, and principle questions (called behavioral or competency based questions).

Most people think that the behavioral questions are the ones that are the “principle questions” but even the general questions require you to understand what kind of person they’re looking for so you can give an answer that shows you are that person (the kind who lives by the principles).

In other words, you don’t just show you have a bias for action by stating that outright when directly asked, you show it by answering all the questions, even the ones about customer obsession or ownership, with answers that highlight your quick responses (among other things).

For instance, if you get asked, “How did you solve a recent business problem?” and you talk about how you researched the problem for six months and brought in a team of consultants to do more research, this is not demonstrating a bias for action. This is showing you move slowly and think about things for a long time before you act.

You may not have been asked directly if you have a “bias for action,” at least they may not have used those words, but that is partly what they were asking. You have shown by your answer to the question that you are not a risk taker. Therefore you will get evaluated badly on the bias for action principle.

Also, I said “partly” because this question also relates to ownership and deliver results and dive deep — you should be demonstrating your skills in all of these areas in your answer.

5. Plan your answers using STAR

You should plan to answer all questions using the STAR technique. What is that?

The STAR technique is a very common system used to answer behavioral interview questions. It provides a structure for you to remember so that you include the correct data in your answers.

Amazon actually asks its interviewees to use the technique in these type of questions, so take that as a hint and use it.

These are the 4 steps of the technique:

S - Situation - context, background

T - Task - what you had to do (not the team - you)

A - Activity - what you did - use as much detail as possible - this should be the longest part of the answer

R - Result - positive; quantifiable; what you learned; what you would do differently next time

Which questions can you answer using STAR? Ones that sound like this, “Tell me about a time when…” So the question might be, “Tell me about a time when you showed customer obsession” or “Describe for me how you’ve showed customer obsession” or “Give an example of your customer obsession.” These are what’s called “behavioral” interview questions. They are very common in American companies, including Amazon.

If you get asked one of these questions, answer by going through the letters in order.

First give the S part - explain the basic situation. Then give the T - what was your job in this situation? Then A - show what you did. Last, give the R - what was the outcome?

If you’ve mastered STAR, or if using it drives you crazy, take it one step further and use the PAR technique instead.

6. Do I have to use their words in the answers?

What do I mean by this? If you get asked, “Tell me about a time you showed customer obsession” should your answer use “customer obsession”?

Not necessarily. You can say you “value customers” or “pay attention to customers” or “are customer oriented.” Or if you want to use their words you can say you are “obsessed” with customers.

7. Keep your answers the right length

Answers to behavioral questions should be between 2 and 4 minutes. Once you go above that you are giving too much detail. Does everyone agree with my time limit choice? No. Everyone has a different opinion about the proper time limit. However, the reason I choose this time is that I’ve heard a lot of people tell me the comments they’ve gotten from their interviewers. 4 minutes is enough detail so you don’t get comments about how you don’t have enough detail but not so much there are no follow up questions left to ask when you’re finished.

I realize 4 minutes doesn’t sound like a long time, but it’s hard to listen to someone for 4 minutes. The listener gets bored.

If you’re the kind of person who talks a lot, pay attention to this rule and try to keep your answers to this length.

If you feel like your answers are too long, time them. I often time my clients when I’m working with them. Timing yourself can give you a clear idea of whether your answers are too long.

If you’re thinking that you know you don’t talk too much, are you absolutely sure? I’ve noticed that the people who do talk too much usually are not aware of it.

Are you a biz dev or sales type? You probably talk more than technical people want to listen to. Get straight to the point; don’t tell long stories.

Are you from Latin America or another place where the communication style is the opposite of the American get-to-the-point style? You may be talking more than an American wants to listen to.

8. Prepare two stories for each principle

Why two?

They may ask you one question about a principle and then ask if you have another example. If you’ve only prepared one example that shows how you’re customer obsessed, you’ll be in trouble.

No, I didn’t ask you to prepare 32 stories. I asked you to prepare two that you can use for each principle. You can use stories for more than one principle, so you just need a pool of stories you can pull from.

I recommend having between 15 and 30 good stories.

What do I mean by being able to use a story for more than one question? Well, say you have a story about helping a customer. This story will probably work for whatever Customer Obsession question you get. But what if you get no Customer Obsession questions but five Ownership ones? This story will probably work for Ownership as well.

Customer Obsession stories generally work for Ownership because you can talk about how you took charge of solving the customer’s problem, and they also usually work for Deliver Results and High Standards as well, and can sometimes work for other principles.

So you can see that you don’t need to have a story that is tagged for just one principle, and in fact if you do tag a story for only one you’re making more work for yourself.

Many of the questions can be answered by taking a story you already have and tailoring it to a new question.

I think the best way to figure out how many stories you need is to go through a list of potential questions and think about what story you have to answer it. If you don’t have a story, you should probably add another one, just in case you get that question. Most of my clients end up with somewhere between 15 and 30 stories. Once you get up towards 30 it can become hard to remember all of them, so more is not necessarily better.

9. Don’t worry about your English too much

Your English doesn’t have to be perfect to succeed at an Amazon interview. Don’t spend your time reviewing your present perfect tense homework from high school — spend your time practicing your responses to questions using STAR and the leadership principles.

However, interviews ARE about communication.

Even if you’re a very technical person who’s applying for a very technical role you still need to be able to talk to your interviewers in English. If you can’t do this you’ll have trouble, so try to practice as much as you can before you go.

But if you want a reason to relax a bit, remember that Amazon is an international company now (in terms of who works there) so it may be that your interviewers won’t be native speakers themselves.