I applied through a recruiter. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in Jan 2011
Interview
I was applying online on dice/monster and one of the recruiters might have seen my resume so they fixed up an appointment.
I would have to say that I was a little rusty since the last interview I gave was over 4-5 yrs back so I screwed it up. Anyways there were two interviewers in the first interview.
The first one was more friendly, he asked me about Design Patterns, Garbage Collection algorithms, Priority Queue data structure (which DS would you use if you had to implement pop and push methods). Wherever I would get stuck, I would tell him what I am thinking and he would help correct me and I was able to nail it. I had good long chat with him, talked to him about which project are they recruiting for.
The second interviewer didn't seem to like my experience as a lead, he thought it was more of project mgmt. I think it is with him that I might have earned a negative review, but not without screwing up some easy questions. He asked me to write a program to printout words in a string in reverse fashion (so "Hello World" becomes "World", "Hello"). He asked me to write a program and read it out aloud. I fumbled on it. He asked me some database questions like difference b/w primary, unique and null key. Explain a deadlock scenario in Oracle.
Although the real negative part was the Amazon recruiter who was so eager to fix up an interview but didn't have courtesy to mail back and say that i didn't make the cut. I did email her since I had time crunch issues and wanted the interview to move fast if I did make the cut. However guessing it by her non response, I moved on. So typical of companies these days.
I would mark this as positive experience because the interviewers were nice and it did tell me of my shortcomings.
One tip to those due to interview: Go through the list of questions people post here (atleast in the first 10 pages). It the same questions with a little variation.
Initial screening call with recruiter followed by a 1 hr hacker rank question on DSA. The final round was a panel consisting of 4 interviews ranging from technical design, more DSA and behaviour questions.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Describe a time when you disagreed with your team and how you resolved it
Online Application & Assessment: Candidates apply via amazon.jobs and may be asked to complete online assessments (work simulations or technical tests).
Recruiter Phone Screen: A 30-60 minute interview to discuss your background, interest in the role, and initial behavioral questions.
Technical Phone Screen (For Tech Roles): A 60-minute interview focused on data structures, algorithms, and coding in a shared editor.
Interview Loop (Virtual/Onsite): The final stage, usually 3-5, 45-60 minute interviews held on the same day or over a few days.
Behavioral Questions: These focus on past behavior (STAR method: Situation, Task, Action, Result) mapped to Leadership Principles.
Technical/Functional Questions: Problem-solving, system design, or domain-specific questions.
Bar Raiser Interview: One interviewer is a "Bar Raiser," a neutral employee from another team tasked with ensuring hiring standards remain high.
Hiring Committee/Debrief: Interviewers meet to discuss candidate feedback and make a hiring decision.
Recruiter screen. Then 2 coding interviews then onsite rounds (another coding question, then a system design question, then HM behavioral interview). System design was simpler than other companies. Coding was leetcode ish