Amazon Product Managers work cross-functionally on global roll-outs with internal and external teams. Talk about your cross-functional work experience and how it will benefit our team.
The interviewer wants to know that you have experience succeeding in this type of environment. For example, Amazon expresses in its Product Manager job postings that the successful candidate will work cross-functionally with internal and external teams, including software development engineers, operation managers, finance, supply chain, leadership, and sellers, to implement features for global roll-outs. If you have experience working for a larger company, you have likely collaborated on a project with teams from another department.
Succeeding in a cross-functional work environment takes excellent interpersonal skills, clear communication, superb organization, and strong task prioritization skills. Your ability to work with cross-functional teams will be a significant asset to Amazon, especially in a Product Manager role. In addition, your ability to work well with multiple job functions, departments, and stakeholders is a significant factor in your success. Think of a time when you had to collaborate with the members of other teams and functions. Share any challenges that came up for you, how you handled these, and what you learned from the experience.
"I have worked in cross-functional agile teams most of my career. Immediately after graduation, I joined Company X as a Junior Product Manager. We had teams across the globe, giving me my first taste of working with teams across numerous time zones. It was a challenge at first; however, I quickly caught onto the team dynamics, learned who was available during what time of day. I learned to arrange my tasks around other people's availability, ensuring that our time differences did not result in project delays. For example, there were many times that I would jump on a video call at 10 PM so that I could reach some of our engineers located in Dubai. I found the collaboration to be exciting because we accomplished so much as a team. In my previous PM position with Company Y, most of our team members were local, which presented different cross-functional team challenges since we all worked in tandem on the same 9-hour schedule. I found that projects often saw more delays since our workday was more compact. In my current position with Company Z, we have a global team. Many of our engineers and researchers are located in Noida, Melbourne, and Singapore. I much prefer a global team, and these positive experiences will ensure that I will bring a strong enthusiasm for collaboration to Amazon's world-class team. Specifically, I have learned to build a team based on trust, communication, respect, and empathy. Despite distance or scheduling, I concentrate efforts on getting to know everyone on the team personally. I treat each person as a unique individual and value one-on-one relationships. As a PM, I am also a team motivator, so I put effort into ensuring that everyone on the team knows how their special contribution makes a difference in the project. Regardless of my team being 6 people or 60, I will ensure that the team chemistry remains strong."
