I applied through an employee referral. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon in Oct 2012
Interview
Got scheduled an interviews which consisted of 3 phone calls after my friend dropped my resume off to Amazon (he works there). Some questions were hard, some were not, they all consisted of things you learn in University level Computer Science courses; reduce time complexity and memory complexity, that's what they were looking for. Some questions caught me off guard but they are all answerable if you study. Here were the questions:
1st interview:
Given an array of integers, return in a function the number of instances odd numbers
Given a binary tree, return the minimum depth of a particular leaf node
2nd Interview:
Given an integer, write a function which return whether or not the integer is divisible by 2
Given a function which takes in a 2D point "n" , an array of 2D points and a number "k", return the k closest-points to "n"
3rd Interview:
Given a singly-linked list, return the 3rd from last element
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Given a function which takes in a 2D point "n" , an array of 2D points and a number "k", return the k closest-points to "n"
Recruiter screen, followed by an online coding assessment and then a technical phone interview. The final round was a virtual onsite loop with multiple interviews covering data structures, system design, debugging, and Amazon Leadership Principles. The technical questions were practical but time-constrained, and the behavioural questions required specific examples using the STAR format.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Design a scalable URL shortening service and explain how you would handle high read traffic, collisions, database schema, expiration, and basic monitoring.
That moment when the interviewer asked about finding indices in an array for a target sum was wild — I had just tackled something identical while prepping on PracHub. The interview included a technical round with another question about designing an in-memory LRU cache and a behavioral question about meeting tight deadlines. After a smooth discussion, I was told I'd received an offer, which I happily accepted. Overall, the process felt pretty straightforward and not overly challenging.
Interview questions [3]
Question 1
Given an array of integers return the indices of two numbers summing to a target
Interviewed for silicon team. Have only been asked about the domain specific knowledge in 1st round and system design in 2nd round and C coding in 3rd round.
The interviews were 50 mins each.