Amazon Interview Questions
Prepare for 54 Amazon interview questions covering Leadership Principles and bar-raising scenarios.
Question 12 of 54
At Amazon, we seek to hire leaders. Tell me about a time you took the initiative to improve work-related procedures.
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Rachelle Enns is an interview coach and job search expert. She works with candidates to perform their best in employment, medical, and post-secondary admission interviews.
One of their leadership principles is "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 of time." Another of Amazon's Leadership Principles is to 'Insist on the Highest Standards.' Amazon believes leaders continually raise the bar, driving their teams to deliver high-quality services, products, and processes.
Rachelle Enns is an interview coach and job search expert. She works with candidates to perform their best in employment, medical, and post-secondary admission interviews.
"I was able to present and implement one specific change in the office this past year. It was a recycling program that I felt was very important, even for our small office. We had significantly less waste after my initiative was implemented, and I enjoyed seeing others take pride in helping our environment."
Rachelle Enns is an interview coach and job search expert. She works with candidates to perform their best in employment, medical, and post-secondary admission interviews.
"I recently made suggestions to my manager about the team messaging application we were using. I found a team-based app that offered a lower monthly cost with added features. He took the suggestion, and it has worked well for our team! The company was happy with the cost savings as well."
Kevin Downey has an extensive background in business management, recruiting, branding and marketing. He's volunteered his career coaching services at job fairs, lecturing on interview techniques and crafting winning resumes and cover letters.
"I closely examined why our staff kept taking particular shortcuts and roundabout ways of doing their jobs, which frequently resulted in greater discrepancies. I then realized that the training materials were dated and incomplete. So I decided to revamp the methods by which people navigated how to follow the proper procedures, which were faster and easier than the shortcuts they'd implemented. I also created a weekly bulletin informing our staff of these improvements. This increased productivity and reduced the amount of rework substantially."
Kevin Downey has an extensive background in business management, recruiting, branding and marketing. He's volunteered his career coaching services at job fairs, lecturing on interview techniques and crafting winning resumes and cover letters.
Determining how to properly suggest changes requires leadership, creative thinking, and emotional intelligence. Before suggesting change, it is important to understand why things are done the way they are and establish what has been attempted previously. If you have ever taken the opportunity to present your employer with potential change or suggest improvements, describe your experience. Talk to the hiring manager about when you showed such initiative, how you went about it, and how it improved work-related procedures.
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Anonymous Answer
In my previous position, I was responsible for writing social media analytics reports. The company didn't have a tool to gather data from the posts (Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin) and did the work manually. The analysis took too long and the data validation even longer since I had to check manually that I didn't have any missing data. I decided to do extensive research to find a free online tool that I could use to help me with this task. My coworkers didn't even know that these tools were available, and I managed to find one. It was challenging to use, but in the end, I became an expert and taught my colleagues how to use it too.
Rachelle's Feedback
You set this answer up very well! It's great that you looked for a tool that would be helpful and at no financial cost to the company. Fantastic answer!
Anonymous Answer
I was reading the book "When" by Daniel Pink. Pink talks about the importance of micro-breaks. I suggested to my HR team that they replace large water bottles with smaller ones so that people could go to the water cooler to fill up their bottles more frequently. This helped people take small breaks and allowed everyone to talk to peers more frequently. This suggestion helped the team be more energized and active during the day.
Rachelle's Feedback
This is a fantastic example of a thoughtful work-related improvement/suggestion. I like that you tie your response into a book that you read. This approach shows that you are dedicated to professional development and giving back to your workplace community. Nicely done!
Anonymous Answer
When I started my position at xxx Company, I analyzed its entire process and noticed that if we make a few changes in that process, we will have more customers and provide quick services to them. It was a small company, and they didn't even have SOP documents for their employees so I started to suggest making SOP first then make changes in the operation and productions task for qualitative and quick deliverables. After making those changes, we would be able to increase our productivity by around 35%.
Rachelle's Feedback
Good for you! It sounds as though you made a significant impact on the organizations' productivity and overall procedures.
Anonymous Answer
I began working for ________ as a COVID-19 contact tracer last June. The state hired about 80 people a week for four weeks in a row from various walks of life. Since it was a start-up organization, there were very few processes and even less training. I knew I needed help navigating but didn't want to overload my team leader, and I needed to rely on my fellow CTs. The state used google tools, and I thought google must have something like Slack that would allow us to post some how-to's and ask questions of the team to get fast responses. I found Google Currents, began a channel with my team and expanded it to all 250 colleagues. It started with a "how do I get an education" and kept growing until we had about 25 threads/channels covering resources for sick people, how to use the spreadsheets, how to use the survey, and more. The tool was a huge success! The CDPHE organization began to use it for other purposes, and the Governor even gave the project a shout-out! I was happy to help my colleagues and, frankly, to get the help I needed to succeed.
Stephanie's Feedback
This is an excellent example! Your _________ service shows a commitment to others and hard work, and this response shows your high level of initiative, collaboration, and desire to make an impact.
Anonymous Answer
We used to have a long process to create, approve and prepare job offers using the ATS, which required the input of several pieces of information plus the back-and-forth with different teams/decision-makers in order to validate those offers. By spending some time analyzing this process, I came to the conclusion I could reduce the number of steps between candidates and recruitment coordination without making major changes to the system or creating expenses. As a result, I was able to reduce the time by 20% plus received positive feedback from candidates.
Amanda's Feedback
This is an excellent example; however, you can improve it by telling the interviewer what you did to reduce the number of steps in generating job offers. You can also share what professional skills you used when taking those steps such as critical thinking, strategic planning, or data analysis.
Anonymous Answer
When I was building the customer-facing data scientist (CFDs) team at ______, I realized that the team's demo practices needed to be improved. There was little structure to demos, and the CFDs weren't preparing for demos before they met the sales prospect. This was especially a problem for new hires, who didn't have the experience to think on their feet. So I started writing standard scripts and processes for demos, with guidance about how to choose the best demo for each scenario and how to handle objections. I passed this material back to head office, who adopted it as standard practice for all geographic regions.
Marcie's Feedback
Perfect! This is a fantastic example to cite of a time when you took the initiative to improve a work procedure. Great response.
Anonymous Answer
30/60/90-day onboarding plan
learn by doing
learn by design
Marcie's Feedback
It sounds like you established or improved a 30/60/90-day onboarding procedure, which is great. Can you provide more information about what motivated you to improve this procedure and what the end result was? Consider using the STAR method so your response is logical and structured.
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