Leadership principles
Can anyone share their story notes for each leadership principles? I have been working on it but thought its better to ask someone who has cleared the interview.
What are the most important leadership principles for SDE out of 14? As looks like "Hire & develop the best" this doesn't seem relevant to SDE position. Are there 7/8 principles which are asked frequently for SDE position, which I can prepare.
You can be an IC and mentor junior devs, that comes under "develop the best". You can also help with hiring, by interviewing and providing good feedback on candidates, which is "hire". I think it should be ok to say that you haven't done them in the past especially for lower level positions. Don't lie, they are trained to call your lies.
Sure :)
The interview follows a model that starts with “ Tell me about a time when...” followed by a situation that will test your ability to display a leadership principle in how you decided to respond, creating a positive outcome. Be ready with such a response for every leadership principle. That’s what I did and got hired.
I’m not going to share mine because that would really defeat the purpose, but if you want someone to review yours and give you some feedback I’d be happy to. Hopefully you get that no one is going to ask you “tell me about a time you showed bias for action” you have to read between the lines and come up with right leadership principle and apply your story on your own.
If you've ever built anything from scratch before, the skills that you would use to do that line up with leadership principles.
Asking others isn’t cheating, it’s just worthless because that won’t help you in your own interview. All of the LPs are important for all roles so don’t try to focus on any specific ones. The way I tell people to prepare for LPs is to think of 2 or 3 Big projects you’ve worked on. Now think of each one from start to finish in detail. As you go through it you’ll find parts that line up with the LPs. When you’re asked questions during the interview you’ll be able to focus on those parts of the project and have good answers. The LPs aren’t about just showing that you demonstrated them but it’s also about whether they line up with how amazon uses them. Someone might say they took ownership when their manager asked them to help someone else finish their project on time. That would be called out as lowering the bar for ownership. Raising the bar would be that you saw them behind and took action yourself to help the coworker out with finishing on time and helped with operations of the released product. Think of the term, leadership principles. It’s about how you helped lead your team/org/company to succeed, not how well you follow what you’re told to do.
Depends on your experience. If you have only been working 1 to 2 years then you may have only a few projects to illustrate the LPs. But if you go in with 1 major project and 3 to 5 years (or more) it won't look like you really have enough experience. The interviewers will compare detailed notes after your interview.
Easier to think of it from the angle of your projects themselves. If you’ve got 2-3 projects you’re proud of that you could talk about for hours... just remember them inside out and it’ll be easy to link any leadership principle to them. That’s what got me in
How to interview at Amazon - Leadership https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-interview-amazon-leadership-david-anderson
David is an experienced highly respected bar raiser at Amazon. Please read.
Borrow your coworkers and boss idea and lie about it being yours, make it believable and imperfect. That's how leadership principal works.
Umm.. isn't the whole idea to come up with examples from your experience? I have a loop coming up with them. I won't share mine but this is what I did to verify my set. Get a amazon friend and go over your answers with them, even if they are not able to comment on the quality of work they will be able to tell u if your example aligns with the principle. Especially I had trouble with things like ownership, are right a lot, bias for action. Hope it helps.
Thank you for the suggestion:)
I just cleared the loop and got an offer. Jkhdjik is right, your responses need to be stories from your own experience that align with each principle. Google "behavioral interview questions" for starters.