everything you need to know about the amazon loop before i start i do want to talk about some of the things that uh i i did at amazon i was at amazon for eight years in recruiting uh recruited everything from whereas out warehouse associates product managers software developers program managers and even executives at the company i was a bar raiser for five years there and i had an opportunity to get a very unique perspective about interviewing at amazon so i want to start uh just talking about uh the amazon hiring bar so when i'm when i'm doing my coaching and i'm doing my coaching sessions um with people um the number one question i get is the mystique around the amazon hiring bar what is it and and why is it so uh why is it so uh opaque and its approach and understanding why it's difficult to get there most people when they look at the amazon hiring bar they think okay they're interviewing five or six people and they're going to choose me out of those five or six people that's actually not the case amazon what they do is they look at are you better than 50 of the people currently in that role and do you raise the overall effectiveness of that group so you're actually interviewing against the people that you're going to be peers with and a lot of people will come to the interview especially if they don't have a coach or they haven't prepared and they will you know not bring their best examples and and and i mentioned it at the very beginning about transactional versus transformational so i always challenge people when they start to interview um to bring those transformational examples bring your career defining moments bring your uh your your examples that you're most proud of so that you can raise that bar and so that you're bringing the best examples to the table and being the best candidate the other thing is do you have upside potential do you have long-term impact right so what amazon is really looking for is you know they're looking for hey can can i put this person on the next alexa can i put this person on the next kindle and can they run that project can they can they facilitate that can they be what they like to fondly call the amazon athlete someone that's not just specifics uh subject matter expert in one area they have a broad skill set where they can wheel things to work bring people together and work cross-functionally so that's the amazon hiring bar and typically what amazon looks for you have to match these two criteria if they want to move forward and make a hiring decision and do we have any questions in the chat before i move forward not yet so i believe we can move forward for now great so there's two pillars of interviewing at amazon one pillar is content the other pillar is delivery and the content is is something that is it's what you're bringing right it's the example itself and if your content again if it's a transactional uh amount of content then it's it's not gonna do well usually the the example has two uh two things that can happen to it right either the content is is not big enough and and that's the case where as a coach i will tell you i'll say okay you know we have to throw that away right we that that's just not going to work it's not going to raise the bar at amazon and it's just it's not there um the other piece is the person and this is the majority of the time they may have a really good example an example that's there and it's available but they're not articulating the content in the right way that shows the the scope and the breadth of that example for example i had someone recently who they gave me an example and i was about to tell them to throw it away but as i go deeper into that content and learn more i noticed that they had influenced the cpo of their company with data that allowed them to get head count to run a massive project in massive scale that basically led a revenue of over 10 million dollars that's big content so a lot of times it's people who that don't get the job are just not selling themselves the correct way they're not articulating themselves the correct way and and what i do with my coaching sessions is i really extract that information out so that we can make sure that they're putting that there and we're setting them up for success and they are getting that content that um will get them to offer right um and we're getting to that transformational piece versus the transactional piece so that's content um the next is delivery so delivery is a lot of things delivery is your background your your attire your your lighting um and that's what i like to call a positive unconscious biases which is a whole different uh scenario but the majority of what delivery is is your communication style i have a range that i've you know the thousand interviews i've done um my vague verbose range and every person um when they're communicating we can be talking interpersonally and things are fine but when you're telling an example and you're telling a story that's a different vehicle for communicating and people tend to either lean one way the other people who are vague tend to not do as well because they're not giving as many data points and those data points differentiate getting to a hiring decision because amazon is notorious for not wanting to hire the best person for the role but not hiring the wrong person for the role so if you're vague and you don't have those data points they're going to be on the fence and they're not going to hire you and on the verbose side now the verbose side people actually will get the job from time to time people who are verbose who are telling compelling and engaging stories will get the job but majority of the time those verbose individuals tend to be long-winded and be exhausting and they typically don't get the role so the goal is you want to be somewhere in the middle almost leaning towards verbose giving enough data points telling a compelling story telling an engaging story and again it's different from interpersonal communication so if you're not a good storyteller that can be difficult and that's something i work on in my coaching calls is how you can combine the two the content and the delivery and create a masterpiece so that you can get the job checking in yes sorry i was actually gonna ask your question how long do you think um an optimal story should be so that's a good question right so it depends on the the story itself i i've seen people who've gone into verbose uh explanations in their stories and that might be their communication style and they give really good engaging stories um and it also depends on the level right so if you're if you're talking about an executive candidate those stories can go deeper and and more um wider than someone who might be interviewing for an internship or an entry-level position rule of thumb is you want to stay between three to five minutes now if you go beyond that it's not it doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad thing right um it's it's a very ambiguous uh style of interviewing when you're doing behavioral interviewing but as long as you stay within that three to five that's a that's a good rule of thumb um but if you're if you're doing that at the sake of uh really compelling details that will actually get you the job then it's okay to go past that yeah i would 100 agree i always try to stick to the three minutes actually because what i realize um with loads of my candidates is that when it goes to the five mark however complex it is and whatever level they go in for it's hard to keep engagement um right have you noticed that yeah you're right i mean the last thing you wanted is the eyes the glaze over right um but it you know the same you know same into the spectrum right if if you're if you're doing talking about tech or you're talking about something that's in it's hardcore tech and you're talking about a machine learning um operation or machine learning kind of project those can go deeper and they require that deeper level of of communication so you're right especially on the non-tech side i would say you're you're you're pretty relevant money with that that four-minute mark but um i would say you know that's a good reason to hire a coach is because it you could be at that five-minute mark and be like okay that's appropriate or you could be that five minute park mark and all of a sudden it's like you know you're you're you've lost your audience and and they don't care about the story as much anymore so i think it's ebb and flow but yeah you're right a good rule of thumb three to five four and then you know if you go past that then you know obviously it's it's said it's discretion of the coach and discretion of the interviewer um we actually have a question because you mentioned uh about the hiring bar before and um jeffrey is asking how does amazon objectively determine how candidate will raise the bar i and i think that's quite a good um good question yeah that is a good question and ultimately you know the question that i would ask as a bar raiser especially if we're on the fence is so let's say for example you have three people who like the person three people who don't and we're at a standstill um so as a bar raisers job your job is to ask bottom line questions to really determine that person's scope that person's impact so i usually ask the question i say okay first of all mr hiring manager do we think this person raises the overall effectiveness of the role but in the role in the team if the answer is yes then i say okay let's talk what concerns do you have and when i have those concerns i say okay what superpowers does this person have and does that address the risk that you see today and if they say yes and i say okay well are you willing to fight for this person would you please fight for this person and then usually they give me data points and say that this is why and usually at that point everyone disagrees and commits and says okay it's obvious that the hiring manager really wants this person let's obviously have what is necessary and then they will then move to an offer um other ways that we objectively or amazon objectively looks at the hiring bar is they will look at the leadership principles and they allow each person who puts in a vote a mild strength a strength a mild concern or concern and basically they look at those leadership principles and leadership principles are the guide for everything in amazon and they take those and they basically analyze those and they say do the risks outweigh the strengths and if they do then they'll move non-inclined every time and then they say do the strengths that way the weak the concerns and and do these have a place in making an impact for us in the future and if they do then they typically move forward higher hopefully that answers your question let's hope it wasn't my question great um i don't think we have anyone else commenting now we actually had just one more and i thought i was gonna answer it live but i clicked on the wrong thing so sorry uh the question was about if um um someone get last minute coaching i can actually answer that on behalf of karas we do have a lot of coaches who would do last minute um stuff so i will link at the end of this webinar um different links to the chat where you could um the audience could access different uh discounts and all sorts of coaches on the platform so eric back to you awesome so amazon uses uh behavioral interviewing most fan companies do behavioral interviewing apple facebook google all of them use this format basically what they're doing is they're taking their past examples putting them under a microscope and dropping them the future of that company and say do these examples in the future create impact here right so they do that using the star format um the star format basically is uh it's the textbook behavioral style situation task action and results right and this is usually where you tell in that result statement like what is the impact of what that person did did they increase revenue did they they increase profit did they decrease risk all that's very important in the star method and understanding if that person does raise a bar and putting those examples under that microscope where i see a lot of people at amazon not do well is the peeling back the onion piece so amazon is notorious for peeling back the onion and asking a lot of follow-up questions so you may have a really good cohesive narrative story where it shows you solving big problems it shows you uh your contributions it shows your impact but then they start asking the follow-up questions and this is where a lot of people will actually uh not do very well so uh amazon's a big believer in uh continuous improvement so a lot of times i'll ask the question you know uh what could you have done better here right and if you already said well there's nothing i could have done better that's not the right answer you want us you want to say something along the lines that's focused on continuous improvement right so um this is what i would have done better if i could have done it again and this is why and then they may say well when those uh with that mind and what you learn from it how did you use that mechanism in the future um for for things that you you did that were very similar right because then they want to say okay you did learn from it well let's see it in action how did you do it after that they may ask other follow-up questions like okay you took a calculator risk how did you mitigate that risk between customer need and with business need right you mentioned that you dove into the data can you walk me through how you do data um so a lot of those things are trigger words so when i was a bar raiser out here died deep or a risk or things like that and that would make me want to ask more questions so your ability to pivot and reframe and really look close at your examples and understand what those follow-up questions might be are very helpful in you landing the job and something that i do in my sessions is i ask a ton of follow-up questions very similar to what a ball raiser or a fellow amazonian would do so that you can get more i guess heat and understand that heat and how to respond to it and i can get you through that and lastly is amazon's whole interview is a risk mitigation process right if they're very different from other companies other companies want to hire the best person for the job they don't they want to not hire the wrong person for the job so they're okay every once in a while passing on a candidate could potentially be good if they have risks associated with them in order to find a person that's not the bad person for the job that has less gris and has just as much upside as that person and less polarizing when you say uh risks what could you specify maybe what sort of risks are we are we talking uh there's a lot right so i mean first thing if a person has a risk on earned trust majority of the time they're not going to move forward that means that a person has difficulty with stakeholders that means there is a really big flag in how they manage a team that means there's a really big flag on how they cross-functionally work with other teams earn trust is a big one if you don't do well articulating how you earn trust then you you know that's usually the the interview is usually over um because that that means that this person just can't work with others and that's usually a big thing um there's other risks like they didn't work backwards from the customer appropriately which amazon is very customer obsessed as a lot of people know um for dive deep or more technical role if they notice the discrepancy but they didn't follow uh a good protocol and the follow-up questions it gets found out oh you were kind of careless in those details right is that somebody you want on your team no that's that's a risk right um there could be a risk on ownership i mean i could go through all of them right but but yeah it is like if there is a big risk called out i mean you know the bigger the risk the more likely you're not going to hire the person right so um you want to think about that with your examples and if you have a good coach that coach should be calling that out in your um and your uh your sessions right and you should be talking through that say hey this is how that come across let's let's not add that detail or or let's let's put that detail aside because that's gonna that's gonna rub from the wrong frame absolutely and it's so funny that you mentioned and trust first because exactly what i was thinking and this is why i tell you all of my clients that earn trust basically is the one leadership principle that we just can't upscale you on it's either you're trustworthy or you're not and if there's a problem with that that's a huge huge flag great yeah yeah absolutely so what does amazon ask and i'll run these very quickly so um amazon asks if every leadership principle has a prototype code right um and how you should answer it and and what they would expect right and it's and it's like what is considered amazonian and i'll go through a few of these obviously the list is extensive and and this is not a comprehensive list by any means but just to give you an example so one of my favorite ones and this is tied to customer obsession is tell me about a time you had a difficult interaction with a stakeholder what happened and what did you do and the the prototype example for this is you're coming into a situation where uh things are in disarray and things are not good your uh your stakeholder doesn't trust you but you come in and you ultimately earn that trust of the stakeholder by creating some kind of continuous improvement process or creating some kind of mechanism that helps them build that trust over time and whether that's through results or influencing with data or really helping them uh solve problems that they had for a long time in the end you ultimately build that trust with that stakeholder despite the difficult interaction but that's typically the prototype there um another one is and this was tied to assistant high standard is tell me about a time when you challenged the status quo what was the status quo and and how did you how did you uh challenge it and um and this talks about how you have um something where you've been doing the same thing over and over and finally you say you know what this doesn't make sense i'm going to create something that will allow us to work more efficiently or create bigger results right you may not have a reporting mechanism and your your stakeholders just keep asking for it and they're very frustrated well you decide to create a dashboard for that stakeholder and ultimately allows them and several other business functions to cross-functionally use that dashboard and now they have a reporting mechanism that allows your team to see the great work they're doing and those frustrations are eased right so like how are you elevating the team how are you elevating your customers to a point where you're insisting on those high standards right um the failure questions so this is the most common one i get uh everyone has trouble answering the failure questions so 10 about time you failed tell me about time you made a bad decision come to that time you made an error in judgment um pretend about the time you got a critical piece of feedback and people always come to me like i don't know how to answer that and um first thing i remember is it's kind of a trick question they don't literally want you to tell them about the failure they do but they don't want you to end on it and i see a lot of people who will say um here's when i failed and then i failed and then that's the end of the example well you're definitely not getting a job if you do that what they want to see is they want to see because remember amazon loves experiments and experiments inherently fail right think about amazon's fire phone think about amazon auctions they don't exist anymore why because they failed but they experimented and they learned from it and it created amazon marketplace a lot of that technology amazon phone is now in alexa so what they want to see is they want to see how you experiment how you fell from those experiments or fail from that new thing that you're trying to do but you learn from it and when you learn from those failures and then you incorporate that into something in the future like a new process or or something where people can blaze behind and say wow this new process is very efficient thank you eric for you know basically experimenting and finding out you know uh these new things despite those failures and you creating something new that creates impact um and that's for all the other questions if you can think of something where you experimented or where you challenged things that was new um those are the kind of examples that are really going to raise the bar on amazon it's um interesting to say that because i think i've got a slightly different uh view on that um it is important to sort of yeah get that failure out of the way and have the what you learned from it what you've done would you have done differently knowing what you know now but what i see a lot of times is that people would present a um what i call like a success in disguise so they would literally bring a story because they just don't want to be proven wrong obviously in an interview setting so then they would bring something that literally turned out just going bad bad bad amazing would you uh advise against that or is it something um that's not so bad if so i call this the centerpiece of the example right so the centerpiece of the question so the centerpiece of the question is are you answering the question because people at amazon are very direct they'll say you didn't answer my question if you if you don't answer the question right so um if you address the centerpiece of the question and you make it pivotal around the failure right in the failure that ends up being a success then yes right i mean i would have to hear the example right to really assess it and say what i think about it but um if the failure is is the like the centerpiece right like and then i failed but then we led to success because you know we did these other things and that led to success then yes i would say that's fine because you answered the question and then it led to success in the future you never want the main takeaway from this is never answer a failure question with a failure answer a failure question with the ultimate ending being success um so like your your example of that is is pretty similar to mine um where it ends positively as long as they address it and say this actually was a failure at this point and it answers the interviewer's question makes sense okay um we actually have a question on the q a which relates to to the loop um and they're asking to clear the amazon loop do a person need to get thumbs up from each person in the loop no not at all i've actually seen people make offers several times where it was half and half half people were inclined half people were not inclined i've seen where two people were inclined and five people were not inclined and we moved inclined i will say a lot of times when that happens it usually leads to a down leveling so if you're if you're interviewing for a senior engineer um they may say well you know we really like him they think he's amazonian or she that she's amazonian but um we think they're missing this this is this and we think that they should have some time as a regular engineer before they're ready for the for the big show at the senior engineer so um and i mean i have seen it where they will actually get the level they're interviewing for too um so it just depends you know one thing i will say is your your example should be if you happen to not do well in an interview um shake it off put it in the rear view mirror and do not think about it and then move forward because if you get other people that are willing to fight for you and think your examples are strong they will address the risk of that person who said you were not inclined um so don't give up just because you think you had a bad interview great thank you awesome so uh i know i'm not sure how much time we're at so um i like to use the director's dilemma um when describing how to put together an example a lot of people are like how do i put together example um so think about your favorite directors james cameron steven spielberg um george lucas right some some of the best storytellers out there but they don't just tell a story and regurgitate the details of it they think about the audience and think about how the audience feels and they want them to feel something right a thriller you want to feel anxiety a comedy you want to feel laughter and it's the same thing for interviewing except you want them to feel like hiring you so just using just like a director you have to do it in the right way so the first thing is the beginning of the example and making sure that the interviewer has a a good uh context or easy to follow beginning and understanding if you have a stakeholder that has 90 of your revenue say that right give them understanding because a lot of times when we're listening people tell stories or visualizing right if i'm talking about a painter painting a apartment complex that's just covered in chalk white right you're visualizing that um same thing for your interviewer you want to give them that visualization so you're easing them into the story you're easing them into the example the next is the problem right so every protagonist has an obstacle they have to overcome in any story so very similar to that content i was talking about earlier you want to magnify that problem the bigger the problem the bigger your bigger your solution so think about darth vader right darth vader's a really big villain really big problem that's one of the reasons why star wars is so uh successful is because there's that big presence that they have to overcome then there's a solution right so what is the solution what is your thought process behind the solution but most importantly and that's where a lot of people do trip up is what are your contributions in that solution a lot of people will say we did this we did that and it's not as clear as an experienced interviewer i will ask we'll say okay thank you for saying week but what did you specifically do what were your contributions but a less experienced interviewer will take you at face value and be like i don't know what they did so i don't have enough data points therefore i'm almost dense and i'm not inclined right so reduce that margin of error and say i versus we as much as you can and then lastly is the impact right so the so what you've gotten here you told me this great story but would it lead to revenue did you create what what uh did you take something from 30 clicks to one click and then most importantly um as you're telling the impact uh say it matter of fact you don't have to sell them you don't have to be used car salesmen just say it right uh and because of that i went 30 steps to one step and um it was uh my company really appreciated it and it led to a lot of value including increasing increasing the revenue by 55 that year so just say it right there's no need to oversell it um but that's the director's dilemma i love the exam analogy because it helps with your ability to tell a cohesive story select your accomplishments speak for you exactly exactly great great advice awesome moving on um so i'll run through those very quick so what to expect um so you'll have your recruiter call recruiter interview um at amazon typically you'll move into a text screen if it's a tech role if the tech screen goes well um you'll then move to on-site loop more senior level roles you'll do a text screen and then do a hiring manager interview if it's a non-tech role typically you'll do a hiring manager interview or you'll do a peer interview and then a hiring manager interview before you go to the on-site loop the on-site loop this is the gauntlet this is where things get tough so usually it's five or six people that you're interviewing with and they're all assigned to leadership principles these are 45 minutes to an hour typically um don't go into this say in the same example over and over again it's a surefire way not to get the job you want to think about the math on this so if you're interviewing with five people they're all going to cover two leadership principles you're getting at least 10 examples that you're going to have to come up with i would say if you run into a situation where you can't think of anything then use the second example twice i've seen people who've gotten the job who've done example more than once and it does happen um but if you use the same example over and over again you're definitely not getting the job it's just how it works unfortunately so you gotta think of a lot nobody that's right one trick pony one trick pony or they're gonna download you or they're gonna say you don't have as much experience because we think you do right um and then and then lastly is the debris so debriefs is where they all meet in a room and they will you know weigh your strengths your weaknesses and they'll analyze them against all the leadership principles strength mild strength model concern concern and basically they'll say hey uh we're you know then they'll make a decision after 30 minutes unless they're inclined to hire or we're not inclined to hire if you're not inclined to hire you'll be moving to a recycle um or a reject um but hopefully the goal is that you get to that offer right and then lastly is the offer itself i actually offer a negotiation package that i can help out with this um i'm about to go over amazon's compensation philosophy too so we can talk through that you get any questions on that hannah um yes that's exactly what i'm looking at i was just going to present one um so someone is asking how many questions typically get asked in a um 45-60 minute slot so assuming the the loop good question so typically um it depends on if you have 45 minute or 60 minutes so 60 minute it could be a lot more than 45 minutes something else you gotta think about is your communication style are you more verbose are you more vague because if you're super vague and you're and you're giving them one minute examples first of all if it's one minute example it's not going to get you to to to where you want to be i'll go ahead and tell you that um second of all you're going to burn through like six or seven examples if you're doing one minute interviews you do the math on that seven examples times five interviewers is 35 examples you're going to come up with so if you think about you know the three to five minute and the follow-up questions the intro um it could be anywhere depending on your communication style um i would say most of the time it runs somewhere between three and four uh questions um an hour is definitely four two questions for each leadership principle and it also depends on the follow-up i've had many many interviews where i only ask one question and i spent the entire interview doing follow-up questions and i've seen both scenarios where i've asked one question went through the entire interview with the one question and i was inclined on a person and one where i was not inclined one person so it just truly depends on your interviewer their uh their level of detail and how much detail they want um but i mean i would and i can jump in on this too but i would say it's safe to say the average is probably around four for an hour yeah 100 percent agree i always say that to like three or four that's my scariest nightmare the one questioner interviewer the medicine just won and good luck and just broke your questions um we do have another question asking what does it take to get to the loop so to get through the recruiter call and get through the hiring manager or text screen as far as like number examples i would say i mean four or five is all you need to prepare for max just so you can have some alternate examples prepared for for that interview um it's it's definitely not nearly as difficult as the on-site and one thing about the on the higher manager interview that's a little bit different than on-site is the hiring manager interview is they have a lot more autonomy to select their questions there's not really like a a bank of questions or a leadership principle to focus on whereas the on-site loop it's way more difficult but it's a lot more formulatic because they will have two leadership principles tied to each person and they will be asking specific questions going into it before it even starts right so it's like it's all tied to those leadership principles um but i would say you know it's really all the same thing think about big examples that you you've come up with some careerify moments you've worked with and then um and use those with a hiring manager um try and think of some big two or big three and a lot of times you can reuse the hiring manager interview again when you get to the loop great thank you for for the answer eric yeah absolutely so i'll run through this right quick so you made it to offer good job you nailed the loot you mailed the hiring manager phone screen you nailed the tech screen um everyone wants you on board right so um when amazon makes an offer it's a four-year projection of your compensation right so it's a little bit different you know most companies like base salary uh or base salary and and uh bonus but amazon does three components they do a base salary they do a signal bonus they do stock that they offer you um this is uh it's a combination so they really have a total compensation model um that you know i would say if you're going to negotiate and of course i offer the package so if you want to use me as a negotiator uh happy to help out in this area um is to really focus on that total compensation number don't focus on a base don't focus on a sign-on notice on a set number of shares because that's not really how it works and how they create their offers something else to remember is there's a base cap at amazon so um majori if you're a higher level role most of your compensation will be in stock and i mean that's really the same too for the other levels i mean stock is a really big driver of their compensation philosophy and um i recommend that you really factor that into it because you you could be taking the base that's um where you're at or not much more than where you're at and you're being compensated more in the long term which is more amazon's velocities the long term is is what uh they focus on they also do a 15 year-over-year appreciation they factor into that so your stock and your four is actually going to be valued 45 higher than it would be today just because they they know that it's gonna go up and and that's part of your cough as well you also want to negotiate because the raises are typically small if you're a middle-of-the-road performer they're good for top performers um but uh the raises um it's something to think about because if you're not you know you don't know what your performance is going to be right you're you've been great at your past job but you have no idea how you're getting your amazon um so you want to think about that as you're negotiating because this is a big time when you can negotiate all that because internally it's a lot harder um even when you get promotions it typically only bring you to the bottom of the next level and then lastly annual reviews are focused on outlook years so for example year three you'll get stock for year five um and uh it's a little bit different than your normal company uh offers um compensation so do we have any questions on that anna um not on this one we do have a few actually a lot of people are interested on the bard racer and uh it seems like uh something infamous um so loads of them would just like to know how can they prepare um for for the bar raiser um so it's like a different topic than than compensation yeah so the bar razor's tough i'll just go ahead and move this in the qa the ball razor is tough they go through a really intensive training program that they have to go through to be certified as a ball razor and they're shadowed by other ball razors and if they get anything less than four or five on their rating and they will they won't i mean they won't be certified so it's a very uh tough process i'll say when i went through it it was one of some of the best feedback i've ever gotten in my career and really elevated my ability to raise my standards on how i evaluate people and i actually assess people i feel like a lot of times interviewers they don't know how to assess talent and in the border training program you really learn how to do that so to a piece of bar raiser you really have to bring your bring your best examples um because they they they want to know the impact the impact impact okay great what did this lead to what did this lead to um what did you do in the problem they're going to really be diving into a lot more follow-up questions than a typical interviewer would something else to remember about a ball raiser is you need the hiring manager and the bar raiser to say yes for you to get an offer those two have to say yes and the ball raiser is the only person that can veto a hiring manager so if hiring manager really likes a candidate and the borrower says there's too much risk i'm not moving forward they cannot make an offer to that candidate the bar raiser can veto a hiring manager any time um they are also not as warm and fuzzy as most interviewers i'm not saying that all bar rangers are like that um but um a lot of they're trained to not focus on someone's personality right they're trained on focusing on the examples and the examples themselves so they almost separate you from what comes out of your mouth as soon as you get there so like you've talked you said your stuff let's huddle down with all this stuff that he's given me let's turn her back to the person because this is what matters what came out of his mouth so like a lot of time and i think it's a good thing too because it's a lot of that objectivity um in the process whereas a lot of companies like i didn't like the gateway the guy was talking or i thought he came across as too arrogant or something like that they won't do that they will take your example it will post they will review it they'll take copious notes and they will analyze that and say this is uh this is what we got from this person and this is what we should go by um does this stand up on its own or not if it doesn't they're not inclined so um i would just say really focus on the impact really think about the big problems that you need to solve i mean prepare just like you would for another interviewer one hard part about it is you're not going to know who the ball raiser is typically i will give you a hint though it's usually the person that has nothing to do with your group so if you think of so if you have somebody that's interviewing let's say you're interviewing for sales and you have this random um i don't know they're doing the satellites now you have a satellite analyst on your lube like why is there a satellite analyst in the loop most likely that's the bar razor because the ball raisers can interview on any kind of loop anywhere which i think is why um you know it's created it creates so much value why so many people do it at least for me because i got to interview a wide swath of industries that i had no knowledge in but i knew how to interview so i would say that you know there's not a ton you can do to prepare but really practice your best examples and and look out for that person that has um has experience that's not quite in your realm i think we're hearing so many great tips around uh the amazon processes uh there's actually a good one for me as well because most of the times people are asking oh who's the razor on this and i'm like well i wouldn't know also i don't want to look either because i'm like it shouldn't matter really uh but if i wanted to look um it would be hard for me to say who is so next time i'll look off look out for the rocket scientist and hopefully spot him great um actually we do have some questions uh let's see how we do with time oh we're fine um regarding compensation and um some are asking if they gave um a certain figure to the recruiter and the initial core how hard is it to negotiate upon offer on the back of that good question and um so you're not supposed to do that right you're you're you know i would don't give an answer um you want to deflect as much as possible oh i'm more interested in the scope and i'm more interested in uh what the the team you know deflect as much as you can but if you do give that response um you have a little wild card right in your back pocket it's called a promotion or a competing offer so if you have that promotion that's coming online or you feel like a promotion's happening or you have a competing offer then things change right so like in negotiating whenever that number gets dropped it's called the anchor so when the anchor gets dropped everything is going to negotiate around the anchor no matter what um i recommend if you are going to give a number to a recruiter and you just want to skip all the noise and skip all like the you know the dating game right then i highly recommend thinking to yourself and saying to yourself what is my thrill number and the thrill number is what is the number that when you get it you're gonna run to it you're gonna be super excited to go to it and this number is only defined by you um remember comparison is a thief of joy so whenever you find out that your teammate or your peer is making more than you it doesn't matter if you get your throat number or not you're gonna be upset by it because you're gonna be like he's making more money than me and we're doing the same thing um the fact of the matter is you're you're probably doing better than 99 percentile of the people in that role if you've got your thrill number it's just one person who makes one money so i would say to your say to you if you get that offer that is what you're thrilled by um then then accept it um you can always ask for more right i always i have a theory in negotiation even if you get your real number always ask for more money one last time and and then if you get more money you get more money it's icing on the cake and uh as my grandmother would say it's that's gravy on the biscuit that's that's another phrase for you guys uh my favorite kid yeah yeah exactly exactly so hopefully that's helpful absolutely um also on the back of that we had another question what do you think would be a good source to just know what's the amazon salary so if let's say the recruiter is a bit more pushy they're pushing you on on a figure how would you then know what's at least average at amazon so there are a lot of resources out there we're in a very fortunate time um amazon is is in a the great resignation is happening um companies are tossing offers of people that i have never seen before right left and right they're trying to compete with each other um inflation is happening and companies know this right and especially in the tech world there's two in the us at least there's two million more job openings and there are people are uh employed or unemployed so it's there's a lot going on and companies are being a lot more lacks on on those those ranges so if you had a bad experience recently that might not be the case today um when they were clear pushing back and recruiters are having a hard time hiring too the second thing is there are like there's blind if you have never been blind before blind is a great resource to understanding the market data of what's going on especially in tech you can find pretty much any offer out there for any company and by level and it's real data and you can even ask um blind if it's a fair offer and the community will respond to you and tell you fyi.levels is also a very valuable uh data trove of information so i highly recommend checking that out as well um so you know i would and another thing is negotiations poker right if you have that data already proactively um you can play your poker game a lot better it's a lot easier to play poker when you see somebody else's cars so i recommend doing as much research as you can understanding the range understand the role a big company like amazon has a lot of data behind it now if you're gonna go work for a startup that's a year or two old it's gonna be a lot harder i mean i mean no one's really gonna be able to help you there because there's no data on that but um highly recommend sticking to um blind it's been very helpful for me in my career and helping a lot of the clients that i've coached i've seen people who who have gotten you know 100 100 000 raises on their total compensation just because they've gone blind and started um reaching out so highly recommend that great uh thank you and there's one last question regarding compensation um so onto this topic i think it's a quite sort of common knowledge that there's a salary cap at amazon i mean i've seen that information online on many platforms but this question is actually around if there's this gap on every level there is there is every level every level has i'm not executive recruiting i mean you're asking executives to take 400 500 k pay cuts on their base salary and they're being paid completely all in stock so it's every level great it is i will say the cap is a little bit higher in san francisco and in new york than it is in other regions though but only but not a lot absolutely okay um let's see some other questions because i think we still have about five minutes um on this webinar and uh we do have a bit more questions regarding the the bar raiser it really looks like a super hot topic um today and here's one which is asking um if the bar visor is asking only um leadership principles or regard then more technical stuff as well no the bar raiser will stick to leadership principles um there's actually if you're if you're a technical person like if you're if you're if you're listening this in your sde um there will be one person that will be assigned to doing just your technical screen everything else is going to be lp so it is 90 leadership principles 10 um tech um so leak code if you know what lead code is so focus on the leadership principles and if you're going to be able to um to uh focus on the ball razor definitely focus on the lps i think you're all mute anna yes i am sorry because i was just answering some questions in a chat um i think we're about to finish so um let me uh put some links onto the chats um here's the one for eric actually so um oh no not this one well that just failed miserably from my set because i had something else on the copying tray um so um if anyone would like to get a uh session with you what would be easiest for them to to get in touch how how does colors work uh sure so if you would like to get a session with me uh i have my uh my cares profile here available um happy to speak with anyone that's interested just go on the link you can buy one of my packages we actually have a package for this event that's discounted at deeper rate than my normal discount rate so um that's available and how many days is that uh do you know i think it's 10 days uh i think so yes yeah so so it's available for 10 days if you want to do that which i do three sessions in that package where we can do three hours or an hour three separate hour sessions where we can focus and dig deep into your um your personalized interview style because every person has that different communication style um but yeah just just go on my carriage profile and then and buy one of those packages and then we can schedule some time to to meet um based on your availability and my availability amazing i'm also so the link is now uh here on the chat box i'm also putting uh the link for any and every coaches and cars so if anyone would like to browse over feel free and you're more than welcome um and yes this record this recording will be shared um i think both on the on the website and um uh on our linkedin page as well and i do believe that we're gonna put it on youtube too so great um yeah i think we're just on time so yeah i'd just like to thank everyone for participating on tonight's webinar and special thanks to eric for sharing his knowledge um with us it's been super valuable i really hope that everyone found something interesting in it and we'll learn something regarding the amazon loop awesome thanks anna thanks everyone appreciate that everyone have a good one bye bye