Amazon Interview Experience

Pradeep Verma calls himself just one of those Indian kids but Amazon usually doesn’t recruit every other kid out there. Pradeep did his internship at Amazon last summer and not surprisingly got a full-time offer from the e-commerce giant thanks to his excellent performance. In an interview with TopTalent. He talks about his internship experience and how it benefited him.

1. Can you briefly describe your background?

I hail from Visakhapatnam, a city in Andhra Pradesh. I ended up with an AIR 6025 in IIT and an AIR 1745 in AIEEE. Now, I am pursuing my B Tech final year in Computer Science and Engineering at NIT Trichy. My dad works for the Government and my mom is a homemaker. Prior to engineering, I was not any different from other Indian kids. As I entered NIT, I quickly grabbed some interest into Computers and worked my way through to get into a Computer Club at college (called DELTA). Apart from this, I am into many other teams at college conducting and organizing events/fests. I am the Marketing Chairman for NIT Trichy’s International Cultural Festival, Festember. I pursued research on “Parallel Algorithms – Task Assignment” for some time and I am expecting to publish a paper on this topic very soon.

2. Can you describe the complete hiring process? Did your internship help you grab this offer?

Amazon came to our campus to hire interns. The Selection Process consisted of a written test, programming test followed by two interviews. We were tested on Data Structures, Algorithms and OOP Concepts during the interviews. I did an intern at Amazon in the summer of 2013 post which I have been offered a Pre-Placement Offer from them.

3. What project did you work on during your internship?

Amazon, as all of us know is a giant in e-commerce. Something very astonishing about Amazon is the scale at which they function. At some points the servers at Amazon need to handle something close to 10,000 orders per minute. So in this company, speed and complexity handling is a great challenge considering the scale at which they function.

My project was along the same lines – I had to bring down the running time of a “process” [confidential and cannot be disclosed] from 2 to 4 hours to something close to 15 minutes. I used AWS and Java Technologies to achieve the same.

4. What were the tricky questions you encountered? How did you tackle them?

I was questioned on Data Structures, Algorithms, OOPs and other basic concepts. I still remember one question in which they asked me to choose a favorite game and give an OOP model for the same. This is something real and application of what we read in books. This involved a lot of thinking and I liked the way they asked it. Apart during the intern I required concepts from Operating System, Threads, Basic Algos and DBMS to complete my project.

5. How much preparation did you put in to get this opportunity?

I should say I dint put any focused preparation for the above. I went with the flow, grabbed all opportunities to learn and innovate. I feel what companies look for is an overall well developed person. So I guess my involvement into a lot of clubs and activities, decent tech knowledge and my projects got me this opportunity.

6. What is your advice to other aspirants looking for similar opportunity?

Technically, get to know all basics of Algos, DS, OS, DBMS, Networks etc. I would recommend interview designed books like “Cracking the Coding Interview” by Gayle Lakmann and “DataStructures and Algorithms” by Narasimha Karumanchi. Apart one great opinion I have is, it is just not enough to be a good coder, develop in all aspects – Have a decent pointer, grab all opportunities (you have a lot of them in IITs and NITs), get social, learn some tech, do some cool projects and any company would be more than happy to have you with them.

7. What should one keep in mind while preparing a resume?

A resume is one page reflection of YOU. It is important to customize a resume for companies. For eg Research projects would interest Microsoft R&D profile and Coding projects would attract Facebook or Google.  And one thing I find in most resumes is people put a lot of unnecessary stuff. No one out there really bothers if you had won some Bronze medal in a quiz when you were in 6th Class at School Level.  Get to real stuff. Put yourself into a shoe of a recruiter and think what you would look for in a resume.  And it is very important to proof read your resume. Having spelling mistakes on a resume could be a blunder.

All Practice Problems for Amazon !