February 2017, Amazon. Hiring

Set up the interview question bank behind 14 hiring events

I proposed changes to how the fraud and risk org interviewed engineers, ran a question-writing session across two offices, and built a shared bank of test-case-backed questions used in 14 weekend hiring events.

  • Hiring
  • Leadership

30+

curated questions

10 of the first 20 contributed by me

14

weekend hiring events

2

online drives

on HackerEarth

What would have happened

Interviewers kept improvising questions, so the bar varied from panel to panel.

The call

Give every panel the same tested questions and answers, so hiring decisions compare like with like.

What I did

Organized the question bash with a colleague at the second site, wrote 10 of the first 20 questions, kept the bank in one template and shared it with leaders travelling to interview.

What changed

30-plus questions were used in 14 weekend hiring events and 2 online drives.

Proof

The original documents are held in my private record and can be shared on request.

What people said

“Very useful.”

Engineering leaderAmazon, June 2017

“Thanks for diving deep Datta. Appreciate that.”

Senior engineering managerAmazon, February 2017