Amazon Confidential Amazon Interview Question Bank

ARE RIGHT, A LOT

Definition and Indicators

Are Right, A Lot - Suggested Behavioral Interview Questions

1. Tell me about a time when you didn't have enough data to make the right decision. What did you do? What path did you take? Did the decision turn out to
be the correct one?
2. Tell me about a strategic decision you had to make without clear data or benchmarks. How did you make your final decision? What alternatives did you
consider? What were the tradeoffs of each? How did you mitigate risk?
3. Tell me about a time when you made a difficult decision with input from many different sources (customers, stakeholders, partner teams, etc.). What was
the situation and how did you arrive at your decision? Did the decision turn out to be the correct one? Why or why not?
4. We don't always make the right decision all the time. Tell me about a time when you made a bad decision. What was the impact of that decision? What did
you learn? How have you applied what you learned?
5. We don't always make the right judgment all the time. Tell me about a time when you made an error in judgment. What was the impact? What did you
learn? How have you applied what you learned?
6. Tell me about a time when you discovered that your idea was not the best course of action. What was your idea? Why wasn't your idea the best course of
action? How did you find out it was not the correct path? What was the best course of action? Who provided it? What did you learn from the experience?
7. Describe a time when you brought different perspectives together to solve a problem. What types of different perspectives were represented? How did you
seek out different points of view? What was the outcome? Where there any key learnings from this experience? Knowing what you know now, would you
have done anything different?

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Amazon Confidential Amazon Interview Question Bank

STAR WORKSHEET
Your Behavioral Question: __________________________________________________________________ Leadership Principle: ______________________________________
 Choose behavioral question that provoke specific examples or stories for your assigned Leadership Principle(s).
 Process the example using STAR. Stories have beginnings (Situation/Task), middle (Actions) and ends (Results).
 Once you have established the story, PROBE to dive deeper on your assigned competency (Leadership Principle), get clarity or pursue a concern.
 If appropriate, CHALLENGE the candidate’s statements, decisions or thought process.
SITUATION/TASK - Describe the situation/task you faced and the context of the story Notes

S Answers the questions: where did this occur, when did it happen, why is it important?
Probing Questions:
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Why is this important? What was the goal?
What was the initial scope of the project? What were the challenges?

T
What were the risks and potential consequences if nothing happened?

Challenge Questions:
 Why did you choose this story to illustrate a xyz accomplishment?
 What other stories can you think of that demonstrate…xyz?
 Could you come up with an example that is more recent?

ACTION - What actions did you take?

A Answers the questions: what did you personally own, how did you do it, who else was involved?
Probing Questions:
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Deep probe functional expertise and/or assigned core competency.
Were you the key driver or project owner?
What was your biggest contribution? What unique value did you bring?
 What were the most significant obstacles you faced? How did you overcome them?

Challenge Questions:
 What did you do specifically versus the team?
 How did you set priorities…deal with xyz problem… or get manager buy-in?
 What decisions did you challenge? Why? How did you influence the right outcome?

RESULTS - How did you measure success for this project?

R
What results did you achieve?
$ Cost savings, revenue generation
# Quantify to understand volume, size, scale
% Percentage change, year over year improvements
 Time to market, implementation time, time savings
 Impact on the customer, the team
 Quality improvements
Probing Questions:
 Why did you choose to focus on these results? What other results were important?
 You mentioned revenue, what percentage change is that year over year?
 What trade-offs did you have to make to achieve this? (quality, cost, time)
 I’m concerned about…(the time it took, the volume, the customer impact), tell me more…

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Amazon Confidential Amazon Interview Question Bank
Challenge Questions:
 What were the lessons learned? What would you have done differently?
 How would you implement this at Amazon?
 How did these results compare to your actual goals? (refer back to goal stated in Situation)