Amazon Interview Experience

Vivek was quite happy when he cracked his first-ever interview on campus. The thought of enjoying college life in last year without the pain of campus interviews seemed quite pleasant.  He could crack this amazing company by being dedicated and disciplined in his interview preparation. As he recalls ‘I used to practice at least 6 problems a day for two months before my interviews.‘ We at TopTalent spoke to Vivek from Jadavpur University about his experience of giving an Amazon interview and what advice he had to offer for others looking to achieve something similar.

TopTalent: What companies did you get an offer from apart from Amazon?

As Amazon was the first company in our campus, I didn’t get a chance to sit for other companies. So its only an Amazon interview that I can share with you.

TopTalent: How do you feel on achieving this feat?

It feels great. No better feeling than hearing your name in the final bunch of shortlisted students. If one puts his effort with full dedication, it does pay off.

TopTalent: Can you give us a brief account of what you felt was the toughest interview?

Since I have only gone through the Amazon interview process, so it’s Amazon by default. I can definitely share the toughest round I came across during my interviews. It was a question based on arrays. It was pretty tough. I was able to solve this question and I think this question sealed my place in Amazon.

TopTalent: What was your preparation strategy?

Not just going through the codes but finding the solution and implementing them on my own, no matter how long it took. That is the most important thing according to me that helped me crack this interview. Second thing was regular coding to crack the online coding rounds. I used to practice at least 6 problems a day for two months before my interviews. Third was getting familiar with all data structures and algorithms.

TopTalent: What resources did you consult? Where did you practice problems from?

1. Geeksforgeeks is a must for Data structures and algorithms.

2. I used to do problems regularly in leetcode.com

3. careercup.com helped to go through the interview experiences.

4. Book : Programming Interviews Exposed

TopTalent: What kind of skills do you think helped you getting this job?

CS fundamentals is very important . My 3rd round was completely on CS fundamentals. It lasted around for 1hr and 15 minutes. One should not ignore CS fundamentals when preparing for interviews . Data structures and algorithms is must as all know. Choosing one site and practice coding regularly is also very important.

TopTalent: What’s your advice to students who are aiming for similar placement offers as yours?

1. Don’t just go through the codes. First try it on your own, that’s very important. Once you have cracked a problem, write it in a paper and check for the corner cases.

2. For the coding part, once you have cracked a problem, always try to run the program at one go.

3. OS, DBMS and Networking. If you get a good hold on these subjects, it will make you stand apart from other candidates.

TopTalent: What should one keep in mind while preparing a resume?

My resume had only one page in it. I would suggest to keep only relevant information in the resume. Most important thing, one should be ready to answer any query on everything in his or her resume.

All Practice Problems for Amazon !