[Music] [Music] [Music] I was a bit slow to press that button hello hello hello you've got a rain of sunshine on you I know thing it drives me crazy it doesn't matter what I do so there I don't know how do I do this right let's move that over and then maybe I can move over and you guys noticed the matching t-shirt know what color would you call this oh gosh um copper or or copper yeah yeah I think I would call it Copp go with copper yeah yes so this this was my top to wear to the old K-pop concert that I went to oh really cool did you enjoy that it was awesome it was really really good I know it's was a bit sad but I am now what is known as a stay in the world of K-pop um I am a little bit obsessed it's a bit weird I know but it's very good actually I was my daughter can actually hear me but I was a little bit skeptical about the whole K-pop thing when my daughter got into it about two years ago and now I am a complete convert it's like this most enormous range of music it's not popits like everything you can imagine they just happens to be that all of these people are Korean but then sometimes they're not Korean sometimes they're Japanese sometimes they're Taiwanese sometimes they're people from Canada it's all a little bit strange but hey right beautiful is well done right so um should we do the intro um yes I mess around with my screen a bit but um J start uping away yeah you do it you do it I just need to change the screen a bit okay cool right folks um welcome welcome welcome to the uh weekly Amazon Interview coaching free event free live event uh with Gigi and myself ygh we are the co-founders of day one careers and we're here for the whole hour until 6 PM British summertime to answer all of your questions about um alt things behavioral interviews at Amazon so um if you guys are here you probably know where we're coming from you um know our backstory and you know why um I think we've got the best expertise um online to share with you guys but if in case you don't in case you're new to um our club uh both GG and I used to be amazonians and while at Amazon we were hiring managers interviewers amongst all whole other things we were actually doing you know the other day jobs as as senior marketers but um on top of all that Gigi was also a bar razor and then um we both started uh helping candidates out um in various different ways I started uh giving folks a little bit of coaching right inside the phone screen which was a little bit cheeky but that's what I started doing um Gigi started um her own business um when she when she left Amazon um but both of us noticed that even candidates with the most amazing the strongest most powerful CVS in terms of functional competencies in capabilities and the great fit to the role from a functional standpoint um they struggled to pass Amazon um interviews um on the leadership principles because quite simply they were uncoached and those were who were coached they were a lot more successful so we both decided to start businesses that helped candidates prepare for the interviews at Amazon um and at some point point in time uh there was one client that we both worked with and she said to us hey guys you need to meet up because you are the most uh I guess what is reliable and reputable people in this uh in this Niche so we met up we had a chat and then uh decided to merge our businesses under um day one careers so that's who we are and um um so this is how this show uh Works folks so first things first the kind of questions that we would like to answer so um Amazon has thousands and thousands of job families folks from data construction managers um to marketing managers software developers and everyone else in between it's impossible for G and I to know the peculiarities of the interview process as far as the functional or technical side is concerned for every single uh job family on the other hand the behavioral interviewing part across Amazon across all of these roles is fairly uniform and this is where our expertise lies so if your question is hey um I've got a data center construction let's go with that yeah data center construction manager interview next week do you have any uh insights about the you know what sort of functional questions they might ask absolutely not zero um but if you have a question about the behavioral side of things um we would be able to answer most questions but there some questions that do stumble us a bit so I'm looking forward to those questions that make a thing actually um also folks um so if you the way this works is you post your questions in the chat box and I see that the chat box is is coming alive I can see that some questions are are coming through so keep those questions going um just um uh a reminder so when you post that question if your question is long the chat box will cuts it short so there's a limit on how many characters you can put in there so just make it um um like a multi-part question like you can see peush um is doing peush will get to you don't worry so do something like that like a Twitter threat and we will be able to pick up the whole um the whole question and we're going to bring up um your questions on the screen and hopefully we will take turns at answering those and you guys will get a full hour full of uh the leading Amazon Interview expertise have I missed anything or should we no you have not beautiful all right right so I'm just checking that uh LinkedIn is working which it looks like it is although I can't see anybody on LinkedIn on the call for some reason so yes no yes X isn't working I sent you a separate message on telegram about that we need to fix that afterwards okay okay so should we get going and see where we get to I am so hot it is unbelievable all right so right I'm gonna have to get closer to the screen because um I have glasses problems so we've got Manali who's got a three-part one so I'm just going to pull that up because it's bigger this way very cool picture Manali very very cool picture okay hey so you have a loop interview for a financial analyst position okay and you want to know which areas on which I should focus okay part two will there be a round involving programming languages or will the interview primarily consist of Financial and behavioral questions part three could I guide you on how to effectively deliver answers okay I'd also like to know how to practice my delivery to steer the interview in in a direction that best showcases my strength okay so clearly I can't do this All For You on a live situation because that requires coaching session which is a back and forth dialogue so well I can give you at least some high level advice so in terms of let's go back to the will there be a round involving programming languages or will the interview primarily consist of Financial and behavioral questions so I think you asked this question before y Genny gave his kind of narrative at the start I don't know ygy doesn't know and nobody else that you speak to about Amazon Interview preparation is going to know the answer to that question other than either the recruiter or the hiring manager the reason being is there's a lot of flexibility that is allowed within the Amazon interview process and hiring managers are to a very large degree allowed to make their own choices as to how they construct the actual interviews themselves so for some ing managers who were hiring for a financial analyst uh position they might include behavioral and functional questions but give some interviewers behavioral and give some functional they might be hiring for a financial analyst role and they might have got all of the functional analysis or testing that they wanted done out of the way in the first couple of rounds and they may just do behavioral questions when it comes to the loop itself so that bit I can answer and no one can answer for you other than your recruiter or the hiring manager so I strongly suggest you reach out to the recruiter and just ask this exact question and hopefully they will give you a response in terms of could I guide you on how to effectively deliver answers well Amazon's very clear about how they would like candidates to approach answering questions which is using the star model situation task action result so in terms of effectively deliver answers if you understand that model well and you deliver your or sorry I have an an add on to that one if you deliver your answer within that framework you should be effectively delivering your answers the one build that we put on it and there's definitely a video about this on the YouTube channel is to add an i to the end of star so it becomes Starry which I was very proud of that when I came up with that um the eye as I say stands for improvement so you can either talk about if I was to do this again Mr Mrs interviewer this is what I would do differently or you can do something along the lines I learned this particular thing as part of this experience and now I have implemented a mechanism to make sure that I apply this learning moving forwards add that kind of learning Improvement piece on the end and that will make you sound very Amazonian because amazonians Are all self- flagellant uh self-reflective always looking to learn and grow from their experiences so um now we teach something a little bit more I'll call it sophisticated in our day one careers digital and our one-on-one coaching uh star is fine but there's a certain amount of ambiguity within situation and task that people often make mistakes on so we do build on that in terms of our own slightly more sophisticated model but if you're following the star model you should be there all thereabouts in terms of uh you'd like to know how to practice your delivery to steer the interviewer in a direction that best showcases my strengths you can't steer the interviewer in any direction the interviewer will have a view of what they plan to ask you because they've been assigned leadership principle uh they've been assigned leadership principles and there are specific questions that they need to ask associated with those leadership principles or they'll be assigned functional orgo the debate conversation we had at the beginning and they will have specific areas that they want to explore in terms of functional so you can't steer the interview in a particular direction all you can do is answer the question and answer the question well so what you need to make sure that you do is answer the question there is nothing worse than candidates who clearly have their own agenda and clearly want to tell you a certain set of things who then go on to completely ignore the questions that you've asked in favor of just forcing down your throat the information they've already decided they're going to tell you so there is no steering an Amazon Interview there is actively listening to what your interviewer has asked you and then answering specifically that question um would you add anything y guy no I think you've covered it pretty extensively agree with everything cool okay so do you want to pick the next there's another three parter folks we got plenty of time so if you have more questions please do bash them down there are no silly questions we'll just give you our honest point of view and benefit of our well I suppose collectively thousands of hours of interviewing for Amazon and coaching people for Amazon indeed okay so this one is from p and the question is as I prepare my responses for Behavioral situational interview questions I'm struggling to quantify outcomes for some scenarios in cases where data quantification isn't feasible how should I still prepare responses for those questions and then the third one while preparing my interview answers I make sure to include Quantified data and all necessary details how can I ensure that my responses are comprehensive and include everything needed okay so I guess uh let me let me try and break your question down into two parts so part one is what do I do if I don't have data uh and two if I do have data what kind of data should I should I include I think that's how interpret your second question but please let me know if this isn't if you think it's an incorrect interpretation so in case you don't have data um so um the thing to keep in mind is that uh what Amazon uh the reason why Amazon is asking for data is because Amazon is a truth seeking company um that's my experience of Amazon they love facts and for reason right um you know because um there's a difference between evidence and claims right evidence so claims is just statements that for example I I don't know um my Pro new product launch was super successful that's a claim right and what makes it into a fact well it was super successful when you qualified with a bit of data that that tells you how do you know right and and in this case it would be the plan was to sell 100 units I sold 150 okay well it was super successful right plus 50% to plan now um so anything that that you um any way that you can communicate the um uh objectives and the outcomes of uh your your story that can be rooted in something factual will be a decent substitute in a situation where you don't have data as in if you don't have anything that you can put on a number line as in like like in my example right like the plan was 100 I sold 150 or uh the latency was was 5% and I reduced it uh you know to to 2% so um so that's one way out the other way out is also think about sometimes in some some situations the anything that you can put on the number line um it's not actually the right way to measure something for example if you find yourself in a situation where your real objective is to deliver Project X by deadline Y in which case well that's fine that's data right so it's it's what I call a binary objective and you can convert it into a binary result I delivered yeah I in the end as a result of all my actions I delivered Project X by deadline y the third um the third trick that you can use is you can borrow results from someone else and some data from someone else so for example again let's get back to this project where let's say you had um um I don't know a small project that was part of a bigger project right and that big project resulted in uh some results that you know that you can quantify you know it's the stuff that you can put on a number line some hard uh numerical data in which case if the two are linked right so you might have delivered this project and you enabled some big big outcome to happen some big goal to be achieved and massive impact to be produced then you can just borrow uh that data you can say that you know and as a result of my contribution along with others um you know um the uh the new product got launched and and um um over shipped its plan something like that so I think these are my my tricks of the trade um G is anything that um I haven't mentioned that you would recommend to the candidate nope you got it covered cool oh yeah do I owe uh this's the second part which data I should include um well this is going to be very very quickly so include the data that demonstrates the biggest uh business impact that you brought to the organization meaning the data needs to be about someone other than yourself um it needs to be about uh your team your department or indeed the whole business and it needs to be just pick the stories where you know bring your best sellers pick the stories with the biggest impact because otherwise what's the point coming to an Amazon Interview I guess I suppose I think that would be it yeah there I guess that's just the final part to that which is how can I ensure that my responses are comprehensive and include everything needed which isn't specific to data per metrics and data points per se that's a kind of a broader question um how can I ensure that my responses are comprehensive and include everything I need well star essentially follow the star model the big difference I think around the comprehensiveness and include everything that they you need is that difference between the what and the how um a lot of candidates Focus just on the what they did so for example um they might talk about what they did when they were trying to get alignment with somebody else and they might say from a what perspective I had a meeting with the person discussed it with them and managed to get their cooperation at the end well that's what you did but that's not clear in terms of how you did it how did you get their cooperation in which case you say I had a meeting with them at the meeting I said this their response was this I thought that that was reasonable I told them I thought it was reasonable they were still objecting to these other parts I gave them feedback that I really appreciated their objection I saw their point of view but brought data to table to show them that actually their point of view was incorrect after we spent a bit of time working through all of the different data points my colleague realized that they had misunderstood or misinterpreted the data once we both aligned on what the actual data meant and the interpretation of that actual data I was able to conclude with this um colleague of mine that they should align with my position and we moved forward from the meeting after that the second bit is how you did it so so your question around comprehensive comprehensive equals how as far as I'm concerned and then to your point that y Genny was answering before that then you have to talk about specifically well what did that how then deliver from a business benefit point of view that makes sense you have yny total total sense okay uh okay let's just pick this one from Florence um can we elaborate on the timeline of the coaching programs if you're interview next week is enough time for you to get ready okay so in terms of our digital course that we're going to give you all a little taster of at the end of the session so make sure you hang around for that freebie in terms of the digital course we usually tell candidates if you want to be able to go through the entire thing from the very beginning to the very end you're probably looking at about a week a week and a half's preparation time however there are plenty of shortcuts to the actual program itself we make it as comprehensive as we possibly can to offer candidates as much value for their money and as much knowledge as we possibly can but that doesn't mean to say everyone has to go through the whole thing from the very beginning to the very end in order to get value from it so there are shortcuts in terms of if you know what leadership principles you're going to be tested on you can ignore some of the leadership principle bits of information in there if you um already have a good sense of what the leadership principles are about but you really want to dive into what exactly the interviewer is looking for there are elements of the course that you can skip so if you have your interview next week and obviously it depends when you mean next week Monday next week is very different to Friday next week so broadly I would say if you've got a week you've probably got a good old amount of time if you can dedicate an hour or two hours a day to this adventure um the course will work for you there are some amazing shortcut tools in the course we have a um AI story review tool that essentially isir readed by yeni and my knowledge into a custom chat GPT model and basically it will review your draft Star Story um aligned with the leadership principle if you prefer or aligned with a specific interview question if you prefer it's all kind of baked into the tool and it will provide you with specific guidance and feedback on how to optimize that story so that's another awesome shortcut that the um system offers you so yes I would say that's a reasonable amount of time ahead in terms of actual coaching and onetoone coaching um I usually recommend to candidates that they come to us for a onetoone coaching session somewhere between kind of a minimum of two days and a maximum well there isn't really a maximum but I would usually say to candidates you've got to be in a position where you feel you can actually do a mock interview some candidates that's four days ahead of their interview other candidates that's two weeks ahead of their interview so there's no real maximum um but the right time to come to us is when you've got something useful to actually mock interview but I'm not keen on working with candidates any kind of less than two days ahead of their interview because they just don't have time to process the feedback and actually internalize it and then act upon it so I hope that helps but definitely stick around you'll get that freebie at the end you can get kind of a sense of what it is that we're offering and then hopefully that that will be um appealing to you and yeah a week should be fine would you agree if gny yeah tot totally totally agree cool do you want to go on to the next one yeah okay so um another question from Manali how should I respond to questions uh walk me through your resume and tell me about yourself are the answers to these questions supposed to be the same or is there a difference between them um so I mean I your um generally speaking what they're trying to get out of these questions their objective is is roughly the same they want to understand how the experience you've accumulated to date sets you up to exceel excel in the role that you are applying for that's their outcome so at the end of the day how you communicate it and how you use your resume as a stimulus to do that or you pre-prepared tell me about uh your self response that's basically um you just need to make sure that you that you hit it so um we offer a framework on how you use your resume to guide the response walk me through your resume which is first things first before you even start answering this question need to realize that um they aren't interested in everything that's in your resume right they're not interested in your hobbies they're not interested in um anything that doesn't Stell that your experience has prepared you to um to to nail what's in that job description so study that job description and try to figure out what is it that they are looking for in terms of you know in terms of skills in terms of the specific experiences and then for example when they say walk me through your resume obviously you need to know what's in your resume so and again this is this sounds like a job advice that you can take to any company whatsoever and it is that's that's basically what it is you need to know um uh what's behind find the projects that you list out in your resume and you can pick an approach so we recommend uh one of the approaches you can either um go by key skills so if the job description is looking for key skills then you can go by ski key skills in your resume and you talk about uh the types of projects and the outcomes that uh that you have produced that showcase uh the skill in action or you can do it the other way you can go and showcase key projects in um across your professional experience and then out line um some of the core skills and talk about the the key results that you have achieved um with the idea that everything that you're sharing with them is pointing towards that job description and it basically says um I've been there done that got the T-shirt produced great results or I've been there and did something like that which is very similar in case you want to highlight highlight some transferable skills and and got some amazing results in terms of your telling me about yourself question so this is where it's not it what they're looking for is you um giving a um um a functional pitch about yourself without necessarily having the structure of the resume with it and so um uh essentially the way that I coach my uh my clients to do it is you start by um uh doing a short professional um summary about yourself you know the stuff that you put on top of rums you see I don't know if you've done this but a lot of candidates do um professional summary and then after that just pick out some core requirements from the job description pick out some core core experiences from your professional profile and if you do need a resume to remind yourself what you've actually done and achieved uh then then do that and then just connect the dots for them just tell them you know I know you guys are looking for one two three four five and as it happens you know I've been there done that got the T-shirt you know you get the idea um a great thing that Gigi recommends I know G correct me if I'm wrong if I misspeak here but um which I think is great I I I think it's a great piece advice and start better later than never right um start a work Journal honestly I've learned this way too too late um start a work journal and as soon as you achieve something at work um you know which is which is something that you know puts a smile on your face and puts a smile on your boss's face write that in write that in immediately because you will forget and your resume isn't big enough to host all of that and it will help you answer questions like walk me through your resume or tell me about yourself anything you'd uh you'd add or change no I mean other than to say I'm highly skeptical that anybody who asks walk me through your resume or tell me about yourself actually has a clear idea of exactly what they want to hear anyway so we're kind of um second guessing I suppose as to what they should be looking for as opposed to best in people everybody actually knows that's what they're looking for um but in order to avoid repeating yourself this might be useful to you it it might be worth thinking about something like walk me through your resume as being a very functional type answer to give where you can talk very specifically about projects and technical skills that you've learned along the way when it comes to tell me about yourself you can focus on the nonfunctional aspects of your career history so instead of telling us about your skills in squl as an example malalia because I remember you saying you're a financial analyst um which you might talk about in terms of a previous role that you've worked on when you walk them through your resume I hadn't you know I I did a massive project one SQL I had to go away and do a massive course I've become an expert in SQL blah blah blah blah blah when it comes to tell me about yourself you might not focus on SQL but you might focus on the non-functional skills soone tell me about yourself you might talk about you know really enjoying working cross functionally and being exposed to different parts of the business being a financial analyst you find this super exciting because it allows you the opportunity to really get exposed to different parts of the business and have that kind of 360 degree view of what it takes to run a business end to end that's not a functional skill it's a nonfunctional soft skill so I like to kind of I I coach my candidates to try and approach those types of questions differently and then that way you're not repeating yourself even though actually the question itself can potentially be repetitive if the interviewer isn't paying attention to what they're asking okay so I'm just gonna pull on Roberto here okay so you're just now considering switch to Big Tech after two decades of agency life okay I can't seem to gain traction I've gotten some rejections but silence for the most part can we share tips on how to make one's resume so attractive that a recruiter might be compelled to reach out and start the process so I'd be curious to know Roberto what type of work are you in when you say agency side what type of agency are you talking about here the reason why I say this um first of all there's no answer to how one can make one's resume so attractive that a recruiter might be compelled to reach out um there's no magic formula um we would give you the basic guidance that everybody else would give you which is make sure that you understand the job description that your resume reflects the functional skills that the job description is looking for that your resumé reflects the nonfunctional skills the job description is looking looking for and that your resumé reflects a significant high and meaningful impact on your employer or as a result of your work because we're talking agency side here um that is measurable significant so that the effectively the recruiter can say oh look um Roberto has all of the soft skills that I'm looking for Roberto has all of the hard skills that I'm looking for and Roberto has had a significant impact on his employers SL projects the reason I'm asking you Roberto kind of what space you're from is as a marketer and Y geni might also have some experience of of this um bringing people who were coming from agency side always had a harder time getting a role as a marketer in Amazon than those coming from client side broadly because they controlled less levers and it was much harder for them to articulate their impact on the project SL client because often they didn't have that direct information and therefore as an interviewer if the candidate and Yi mentioned this earlier if the candidate can't provide specific evidence of their contribution it's very hard to Champion them in a debrief as someone who has had a material impact because great behaviors are wonderful but if they don't turn into to a material impact then it's hard to argue that you'd be a great contribution to the organization so I don't know y have gny if you've got anything in addition that you might advise Roberto adds to his resume to make it so attractive but I'd be Keen Roberto to know what what kind of client agency side you're coming from I I I think you nailed it on the head with uh with with with the clarification question about the industry because there are so many different agencies um uh the the the other thing I would say is um don't um there's there's obviously the most important U the most important thing about the rume is the content um that it represents the second most important thing about the resume is not intentionally formatting your resume in such a way that it completely uh makes digesting your resume difficult for either the recruiter or the hiring manager uh during a rapid review session because again remember at Amazon you know You' got recruiters deal with thousands of applications so um having a relevant profile that has something that fits um and um all the impact uh expressed just like G said it is absolutely essential but if no one can digest it very quickly in a rapid resume kind of drinking from the hos and resumés um scenario um it's it's it's not going to work either so just make sure not to over complicate your resume with Graphics skill charts and all that stuff you know as I always say times neuro when font 11 or Ariel or calibri whatever you prefer font 11 full text no Graphics perfectly searchable but otherwise do clarify exactly what your background you have and we'll if we have time we'll pick it up cool um okay so we're unbelievably 33 minutes in so should we just do our quick come up IAL break yeah let's do that all right folks so oh that's would you just pop Roberto back in I've changed um that screen there we go okay so folks um hopefully you can't hear my neighbor's car in the background there if you can apologies it's roasting in my office have to open the window um right so as I'm sure you realize by looking at the channel itself I cannot tell you how many hundreds and hundreds of hours have gone into building the YouTube channel in terms of scripting recording editing you name it hundreds and hundreds of hours into this channel to give you the very best free interview preparation for Amazon that to G's point at the very beginning I think is unmatched anywhere else on the web we do it because actually it's a privilege and we get a huge kick out of actually being able to impact real people's lives and see that impact so it's a great privilege don't get us wrong but we would like something back from you in return which is to actually engage with the content itself not just to watch it and Skip on to the next one but to actually give us a like for um each video you watch or a little comment at the bottom of the video just to say thanks very much that was great the reason we need that from you is that is a signal to YouTube to say that this content is really good and that we as YouTube are serving this content to the right person if we um if we do that I think you Genny you did some you've got some data say it's the equivalent of like 10 extra views or something along those thereabouts yeah okay so essentially it then kind of raises us up in terms of the algorithm it means our content gets put in front of candidates who really really need that content and who like you are searching for support for their interview so being good citizens of the world in terms of giving us a little bit of support and also your fellow Amazon Wishful hopeful people please we'd love it if you would do that for every single piece of content of ours that you watch so this um this actual video or stream being a case study we'd really like you to give this little stream a like I can see exactly how many likes we have at the moment I'm going to run a little bit of a kind of video Whatever musical interlude and whilst that interlude is playing I would love you people to give us a little thumbs up so that we can then improve the visibility of this video so let's do okay let's do the Mexican one um Everybody if you do have headphones on like I do and You' have guy do you might just want to pull them off your ears slightly this did kind of upload rather loud and I can't work out how to make it any quieter on this particular platform so so as not to blow your ears off just to kind of pull your headphones back and it's like 20 seconds here we go folks please like the stream the stream nowe like the stream now please like the stream like the stream like the stream like the dream the dream like the dream [Music] there we FK there we go folks if you all want to be able to download that incredible piece of music it's available on Spotify imagine can you imagine uh so come on folks just a few more likes that would be really great I really appreciate that and if you didn't realize folks that was in fact me singing all of the um harmonies in that particular piece um yeah clearly not going to be on Spotify at any point but there we go all right Yin do you want to pick up the next one yeah sure okay so um we are done I think we were done with Roberto right so we're going on to um Stefan okay so I find it difficult to second guess which LP is targeted by the question um for example some questions targeting earn trust could actually pass for disagree and commit okay uh any clue on better tailoring the answer right so yes I can see uh how unless you studied the leadership principles and their facets in detail which is one of the elements of our Amazon Interview success system which is the paid our Flagship product um that we're offering everyone uh you might find some of these questions confusing um but in fact the questions are different right um so the question in in the in the earn trust I I would imagine that in the earn trust you you some of the questions might be asking for situations where someone gave you uh choice or critical feedback um and um uh in in I guess you know there were some push backs or someone someone you know gave you push back on some proposal that you that you proposed and then in the high have backbone disagreeing commit that might be a question when um you did the same when you kind of pushed back on some decision that was being made uh especially when you were alone or in front of Authority or something like that um so they are indeed testing you know different behaviors although they are obviously asking for situation where things weren't just a walk in the park there's some friction and tension in there but that's I guess that's Amazon's way to um to ask you to share a situation where um you have I guess more chances to demonstrate such behaviors that are better you know better than 50% of the other amazonians with whom they're going to be comparing you right that makes it easier for you to tell a story that raises the B as opposed to you know answering a question where tell me about a time when you know if you had a you established a good relationship with a colleague anyone can answer that um so how do you connect uh the two so when you are preparing your responses your story Bank when you're building your story Bank ideally against the leadership principles that you know or at least have a decent um probability that they will be tested during that interview this is the only time when it is important for you to build stories for leadership principles and their facets not for individual questions and this is the only time when you actually need to be able to connect questions with leadership principles because obviously you know you will have access if you uh get our Amazon Interview to uh tool pack you will have access to some of the plausible interview questions that that we have there uh but essentially when you're preparing stories you don't need to prepare them for individual questions you need to prepare them for uh the themes and sub themes of the leadership principles which we call facets now when you are in the actual interview assuming that you have done all your prep really really well when you're in an actual interview you just need to make sure um that you do two things number one that you really understand the question and that you are not confused what they're looking for for in this question and feel free to keep clarifying with your Amazon interviewer until you do get the question because no one gets any brownie points for the candidate um you know not understanding the question and being unable to and and answering the question that was that wasn't asked but at the end of the day it's on you right like it's your job to clarify the question until such time that you really understand which one is it don't try to clarify the leadership principle that they're interviewing you with that will annoy people but clarify what what is it that they're after in case you don't understand write the question down as well that uploads your question into your short-term memory it's a trick that's how you trick your brain to uh to really Zone in on the right question and then just do do your best to to answer the question if you've done all of your prep well if you de developed stories to answer uh to to map to specific leadership principles and their facets when you're in the actual interview uh don't try to figure out is it ownership or is it trust or whichever leadership principle it is just um clarify the question make sure you know exactly what uh they're looking there for from you and then do your best job at finding the best story that um answers the question to you know the closest way possible any other wisdom that you would spare GJ uh just to build on your point about clarifying that what exactly it is that they're looking for so not only write down the question but within the question there are always key words in terms of what the actra the ACT interviewer is actually looking for the majority of your words to uh speak about so if they were to ask you tell me about a time where you had to influence a colleague who had a differing opinion about a shared goal okay well the key word there is influence a colleague so when write it down underline the words influence a colleague and if you want to clarify that that's really what they want to hear from you you can say okay so I just want to clarify that you're particularly interested in how I went about influencing this colleague then they could say yes that is what I'm particularly interested in because that will be what they're particularly interested in or if the question was tell me about a time when you had to uh do a whole bunch of thinking and Analysis in order to get to the bottom of a problem you underline analysis right because clearly that's what they want to understand so clarified just want to make sure that you're particularly interested in a story around how I did analysis to get to the bot of a problem yes that is what I'm interested in so on top of writing it down look for those key words in the sentence and once you've pinned down that that is the key thing that they're interested in talking about 70% of what you say needs to revolve around that keyw because that's essentially what they want to understand about you and by the way that 70% is an arbit number that's not something that Amazon has particularly coached its interviewers it's just based on my experience just want to clarify that okay so shall I pick another one uh please okay oh I'm not going to try and pronounce your name because I would just do such a horrible job of it and I don't need to embarrass myself anymore today so you have an L6 senior PM for worldwide Ops rooll coming up um description and responsibilities are generic you asked for the LPS but you're still waiting for feedback from her point of contact how can you learn more about the position um so I would do a if it was me I would do a LinkedIn search for anyone who's a PM in worldwide Ops and just reach out to a whole bunch of people on LinkedIn be super polite and you know apologies for sliding into your DMs but I've got this interview coming up um you know trying to understand what kind of the key leadership principles are for the role and what it takes to be successful in the role could you possibly spare me a few minutes just to give me a few thoughts on what you think these would be 90% of those people will not respond to you I think we can assume that to be the case but you might get lucky and find one one or two people I I've generally had really great experiences with the Ops organization um not necessarily working within the Ops organization but in terms of just how collaborative and willing and open and to share that the Ops leaders tend to be in my experience so I would be relatively hopeful that if you sent out messages to 30 l6s or senior PMs and worldwide Ops there will be thousands of them that you will get at least one response so that's what I would do I'd be reaching out and seeing what if anything you can get from those individuals I would also actually use YouTube as well I know that there are a few Ops people who have done content on YouTube now quite a lot of these Ops people are going to be pretty Junior ones kind of your l4s and your l5s so it's not necessarily going to be pitched at the level that you're pitched at but nonetheless just some of their narrative about their day-to-day jobs would also give you a little bit in of insight into what it takes to be successful in the Ops organization would you add anything any other tips you have Genny no I think I think this is this is perfect and well and nicely detailed should I pick the next one then um go ahead so this one is from I want to say shay um please correct me if this is incorrect I'd go for Shay i' go for Shay okay um all right so what is your best advice for the bar Razer interview so you just treat it like every other interview and there's also shout out let's do the shout out first so also hi Gigi I want to thank you so much for all the available resources feeling so confident going into my onsite tomorrow because of you and I appreciate it Beyond word there you go so I'm gonna we're gonna share some of that Kudos with yougi because although you don't necessarily see him as much on the YouTube channel because obviously I'm far better looking [Laughter] um oh no not I'm only joking everybody um it really isn't really not um you have genny's everywhere and in everything even if you're not actually seeing and hearing him so it's a shared Kudos but thank you shay that's really sweet of you to say so and thank you thank you for the shout outs you know that's why we're do that's why we do what we do actually the shout outs but we want to be a part of your journey um but um you know as you go with your on-site obviously yes I understand what you're you're thinking about uh whether you should be treating the interview with the B Riser any differently and our advice to everyone is don't just I aim for the consistent level of performance across all of your interviews because um for all for lots and lots of very good reasons amazonians will not be making a decision on whether to progress you or to the next stage or um you know or offer you the job on the spot and there's also a reason why you're being interviewed by more than one person not just a hiring manager not just the hiring manager in the bar Raiser but there's everyone else as well because at the end of that process there is the debrief where everyone comes together to discuss um the uh discuss the interview and the evidence that you've shared and and try to get to um a point of clarity for everyone in terms of would they vote to bring you in um and make an offer or not and so the beautiful thing about uh that debrief is that um debate is encouraged and people do change their minds in both directions so the might might be some folks who who were originally not inclined uh to hire you and they might change their mind to inclined and vice versa but it's an atmosphere of debate and the bar raiser bar raisers and hiring managers also uh Chang their mind so everything that you share with everyone during all of your Loop process will be tabled and surfaced and if required if there are some disagreement um uh will be sort of uh there will be a deep dive all the way to going looking at the notes and comparing notes so aim for that consistent experience um and all the best to your interview anything you'd add GG in which case um sorry I was on mute NOP nothing to add other than now I look like a tiger oh honestly I need to relocate my office really don't I um right so right another one from Stefan yeah and I'll just I can do this one quickly um so Stefan why where can you find information on how to perform on the writing part of the Amazon assessment we do have a video about this on the YouTube channel so I'm just going to post the link here and uh you can just go to that link and uh you'll see it's come up there in the comment section just go to that link and there's a whole video offering you advice based on our experience at Amazon so let's just I will move on to Florent right who are the four people if I have four interviews in the loop for an L5 area manager role from YouTube videos I understood only hiring manager and bar raiser okay so I don't know whose YouTube videos you're watching where it has led you to believe that l5s only get interviewed by hiring managers and bar raisers certainly not my YouTube video and if there is a video that Intimates that please let me know put a comment on that video on YouTube and I will go and have a look at it and see how and if I've misrepresented the facts um but it won't just be the hiring manager and the bar raiser there will probably also be two of your peers in that group it might be peers who actually work for the same hiring manager it might be a peer who works in another team associated with the hiring manager those peers could be peers at the same level as you those peers could be um people at level above you or those peers could be people at the level below you although if you're an L5 it's unlikely that you'll be interviewed by and L4 it is also possible that you won't get interviewed by a bar raiser some teams are not particularly at Junior levels are not using bar raisers in the actual interview process itself rather bar raisers are brought in only to do the debrief and they read the evidence provided by the four interviewers and then help facilitate the actual Deb itself so this is not all teams this is some teams and it's I for more Junior roles I've definitely heard about it at L5 level I don't think I've heard a specific specific instance at an L6 because that's a bit riskier from an organizational point of view so broadly speaking these are when you're interviewed by Amazon you're probably going to get a bar raiser some people won't your hiring manager should be on your Loop although sometimes they're not if they are unable to um get to the loop or if the role that's being interviewed for is such a generic role that any hiring manager would make the same judgment and then generally it's a couple of peers that you're going to face so whether it's four interviewers five interviewers six interviewers seven interviewers that is the broad makeup that everyone can expect okay anything to add you guy are we good to move on no let's move on so there's another question from uh I want to say mugur um what is an interview uh how is an interview for an L6 position going to be different from an interview for L4 and L5 um I don't want to like overread into your question right so I'll tell you I I'll respond from uh my experience interviewing these types of roles and I would say that um the uh there's nothing specifically in anything that is a guideline or a process difference that would make it you know if it's a if it's a corporate role if it's not a graduate program then essentially the interview itself um you might expect it to be um somewhat similar I guess there will be differences that they aren't driven by the fact that the interviewer are supposed to I don't know Grill ill sixes more it's just L six is typically or people who are senior enough for L six they're going to have stories that are that are naturally just a bit longer there's more complexity there um there's more impact there and um uh you know they naturally invite more follow-up questions as opposed to uh folks who interview for L4 roles they're typically grads with maybe a few years of experience but they're due to the the junior nature of their roles they tend the stories that talk about their projects and accomplishments they tend to be a bit shorter there are fewer follow-up questions but then um the flip side of that that you know if you're going for a L4 interview the interviewers might ask you more questions per per leadership principle so that composition in itself um I guess is driven more by Logistics um I have never as a former hiring manager I've never thought that oh I need to grill someone that interviews for a n6 more than I have to grill them if they interview for N4 as far as I was concerned as a former hiring manager I was on an Evidence hunting trip um I wanted to find out whether the candidate will raise the bar versus versus uh versus The Benchmark and um I would go for as many q&as and as deeper a Q&A as the evidence in your story allows and once I exhaust that potential I just move on but I never had any specific agenda to kind of be more harsh or lengthy or more thorough for and L6 as opposed to L4 or L5 um but how I'm very very keen to hear gig's approach because you must have seen a lot more variance than how people interview wouldn't you say yes but that variance is not determined by the seniority of the individuals that they're interviewing that variability is purely personal style um and you're absolutely right y Genny the actual key determiners of the difference between interviews from an L4 through L5 L6 L7 L8 is the candidate the interviewer's intent is a IC of level the variance comes in how the candidate responds from an interviewer perspective so you know like you say an L4 is going to have less complicated um stories and therefore invites less drill Downs follow-ups conversations um and L5 has less complicated stories it takes up less time so they're asked more questions uh and L4 is less knowledgeable from a technical standpoint than potentially let's say an L6 we won't say L7 because some most mostly actually they don't need to be technical experts so there's a lot more technical investigation and conversation with an L6 than you might expect from an L4 but it's completely determined by the candidate not determined by the interviewer and that variability to your question is purely stylistic so the same interviewer who has a different approach to another interviewer will have the different approach that is consistent across four five and six I've never ever come across any interviewers who say oh I'm going to put my inter L4 interviewer hat on today because I'm interviewing an L4 and tomorrow I've got an L6 hat that I'm going to put on because I'm interviewing an L6 just doesn't work that way and it would be too complicated I mean can you just I can't imagine the the complexity in my mind of having different strategic approaches to interviewing different level candidates it's difficult enough to interview candidates and think about the leadership principles and the functional side of things and the drill downs and all of that jazz without creating some addition variable of treating different levels differently you just wouldn't do it it's not worth it okay shall we pick another one right somebody from LinkedIn cool so thank you for sharing valuable information cool um what are the key information oh oh we've covered this one off already Rowan um so I'm not going to repeat it actually sorry I should have noticed this before I picked this one um watch the video back go earlier on I think it's like the first question that Y Gen covers off in the actual session itself so I don't want to waste people's time who have been here from the very beginning and already heard the answer to that question so I'm GNA pop you back in and we're GNA get Erica who looks like she's in a very green and lovely land that looks beautiful my husband's in Switzerland at the moment and that looks very similar to some of the pictures he was sending me anyway would Amazon normally test all LPS in the loop or more specific LPS that are related to the job and what will happen if you reuse the same answered in two different interviews okay so no Amazon will not test all 16 LPS in the loop um there's too many LPs to actually test in the loop you'd be there for hours and hours and hours so more likely they will be focusing on LPS that they feel a priority for their particular role generally interviewers are assigned to leadership principles to ask questions on per interview so you just need to multiply the number of interview words that you have by two and that is the most probable number of leadership principles that they will cover it's not an exact science you may sometimes get more you may sometimes get less but that is a broad rule of thumb what will happen if you reuse the same answer in two different interviews um okay so I can't tell you exactly what will happen if you reuse the same answer in two different interviews because it depends uh what I'll do is I'll flip that and I will give you some advice about reusing answers in two different interviews so it isn't an absolute no no don't ever do it obviously candidates who never have to reuse a story because they have so many fresh and awesome incredible stories to tell look more attractive than those that have to reuse stories because they seem that will essentially mean that they are a more consistent High performer than the person who has to repeat stories um however if you do feel you have to repeat stories because many people do not a lot of people have enough very very high bar strong stories to use fresh ones every time we strongly recommend you think about creating two different versions of that story and I'm not going to call it a story anymore I'm going to call it a uh situation and then stories are built from situations so you might have a single situation that you then break out into two different stories and we would recommend that the stories that you break out from that single situation are stories that focus on very different leadership principles so you'll have noticed when you look through the Amazon leadership principles that you can probably bucket some up into themes if it's customer Obsession and earned trust they're kind of people relationship typey um leadership principles if you look our right and biased for Action that's about judgment and making decisions and how you make decisions if you look at um oh I don't know some other ones um deliver results and um ownership that's about making stuff happen about you know making sure that you take responsibility and you follow through and all of those types of things so you can bucket them up so we would recommend that you use leadership principles from very different buckets if you are going to create two stories out of a single situation pick leadership principles from different buckets so you know pick one that's customer Obsession and then another version of the story which is dive deep or one version of the story that's earned trust and then another version of story which is insist on the higher standards that way although you're using the same situation the actual story that you end up telling is going to sound like quite a different story to the other story that you're going to tell that's going to be focused on a very different type of leadership principle uh in terms of the number of times you can repeat um situations through your interview process there is no fixed number Amazon doesn't provide its interviewers any specific guidance on this so I just give you kind of my subjective opinion based on my experience it depends largely on what level you're interviewing for candidates that are more Junior I would tend to be more sympathetic when it comes to their need to repeat situations because they just have less career history behind them the more senior you get the less excuses you have because you do have and should have more high performance um stories to tell owing to tenure and also the level of seniority that you have now achieved in your organization so as a very kind of high rule of thumb I'd say kind of the the more Junior ends the fives and the fours you know if you had to repeat two stories twice three stories twice okay once you're getting higher up I'd be saying like one story twice maybe two stories twice and an absolute push anything else to add you have guine no that's how it's done cool moving on then I would say folks if you've just joined us please do take a second to like the Stream and do us a little favor give us something back for the hour that we're giving you uh we would be very grateful I can see how many likes there are here and it's less than the number of people on this stream right now so if you wouldn't mind if you haven't liked it please do give it a like indeed indeed please do um should we do this last one and then go into the yeah so Roberto came back to us and he mentioned that his background is actually a full service digital agency okay so I was pretty close right that advice that I gave would be very relevant I think it's very relevant I don't have anything anything to add so I think that's it I think we should go to freebies would you say yes okay so let's just stick this up here then yes okay is it my turn to present uh I'll do it I know you did the start so I'll do the Finish okay so folks click on this URL at the end of this URL are a number of amazing things that I promise you you will never regret taking out the first thing is a free little sample of the Amazon Interview success system that we have built uh it's very much focused on customer Obsession uh the leadership principle of customer Obsession which is part of our Amazon Interview success system we break down all 16 leadership principles in the success system it will give you insight into the kind of key facets of the leadership principles the different angles at which you can approach customer Obsession it will very valuably tell you pretty much what the interview is looking for in your response to a customer Obsession question and then I'm pretty sure there's just a little interview mock interview me interviewing me so you can kind of see how it comes to life um the other thing that you'll see is the gorgeous you have Genny giving you a little bit of an intro into the uh incredible AI tools that we have built for the Amazon Interview success them which I'm pretty sure exist nowhere else in terms of the tools that we've built and the Insight that we have pumped into those tools so you Genny will show you what you would benefit from if you were going to be able if you wanted to use those tools you don't have to buy the whole success system to use those tools you can actually use those tools on a paper go basis um and I would really really recommend just trying it once and I promise you you'll love it so that's one thing the second thing that's available to you there is what we call the Amazon Interview preparation tool pack that uh the most valuable part of that is a massive list of what we call plausible Amazon Interview questions we cannot give you the actual Amazon interview question Bank we don't have it um and actually it changes over the course of time anyway so whatever it was when we were there it's not that exactly anymore but what we've done is built up own version which we call plausible Amazon Interview questions based on what we know customer um Amazon is looking for when they're asking you questions so you can take that and you can practice with that um there's like 124 odd questions I think on that maybe a bit more um really really useful tool to have and then the third thing that you get along with all of that is access to our heartbeat Community we have over 3,000 Amazon hopefuls as part of that Community they can meet up with each other mock interviews between themselves and most valuably I think on that app that app is we have another um trained chat GPT model that we have essentially pumped all of the information that you can get on the YouTube channel into a bot we've called him Andy I'm sure you can't imagine why we did that and so then if you have a question and you don't want to have to search through hours and hours of content on the YouTube channel you can just ask Andy and in most cases Andy will be able to answer that question for you if it exists in the YouTube content so super valuable resource honestly totally free you'd be nuts not to make use of it so please do enjoy it and uh yes if you have interviews coming up we have our fingers very very tightly crossed for you and as I said please do like this stream and as you're going through content on the YouTube channel give us a little comment give us a little thank you and then we can be a little bit quid quid pro quo in terms of uh this Dynamic all right folks thank you very much and we will be here same time next week look after yourselves and we will see you then see you then CIA bye