Amazon Interview Experience - Chennai, 12/09/17
Amazon came to our campus this month. The interview experience was fun, and I would love to share it with you all. The job role offered was Cloud Support Associate. The CGPA cutoff was 7.5 and they allowed students from all streams to sit for the process. There were a total of five rounds.
1) Online Test.
2) Technical Round- OS.
3) Technical Round- Networking and Programming.
4) HR Round – 1.
5) HR Round – 2.
The initial online test was fairly easy. There were 25 Aptitude MCQs, 40 Technical MCQs, and 2 Programming Questions. The aptitude questions could be solved with a little bit calculation and backtracking from the options. The questions were the typical ones, and there weren\’t any twist questions. Some of them tested your lateral thinking ability though.
Then the technical round consisted of MCQs from core CS subjects- OS, DBMS and Networks. Most of them covered the basic topics like thrashing, swapping, scheduling, OSI, ARP, RARP, Normalization, etc. A basic understanding of the core concepts is enough to answer all the MCQs in this section.
Then, the programming questions were fairly easy too. They were mostly array based. However, we weren\’t allowed to use C++ STL or any helper functions. I could solve only 1.5 out of the 2 given questions.
From the online test, they selected 59 out of 2000+ people for the face to face rounds.
Then came the Technical Rounds after a brief pre-placement talk.
In the first technical round, everyone was given an OS of choice based on which they would ask questions. I told them that I was more comfortable with Linux than Windows. The interviewer asked me troubleshooting questions based on the boot process. I was continuously asked counter questions after telling any new technical term. After this, I was asked some general OS concepts such as Paging, Segmentation, Virtual Memory, etc. This interview lasted for around half an hour.
The next round was a networking+programming based round. The programming questions was a Dynamic Programming question. However, not being really familiar with the technique, I solved it using a hash map and O(n^2). The interviewer was satisfied with the approach and my thought process. The networking questions asked were based on concepts like DHCP, OSI, MTU/MSS and the DNS-flow. I accidentally gave a wrong answer to a very easy question. I was asked to proceed to the next round nevertheless.
In the first HR round, they checked leadership principles by asking questions with a trapdoor. Also, written and verbal communication skills were thoroughly assessed. I got a bit nervous at times during this round, but it was fine overall. They also asked about past projects and details about them.
The final HR was more like an informal chat for me. They basically test whether you are fit for their team or not. The interviewer was very friendly and this round was my best round in the entire process.
Finally, my college released the list of selected students in a few days. My name was present in the list 🙂
My advice: Don\’t just focus on programming. Focus on core CS subjects too. It opens a lot of doors. Also, don\’t just rote learn. You will fall in your own trap while explaining the concept then. And keep a sharp body language in the interview. I am an average student, and I am sure having a positive body language had a role to play.
All the best for interviews !
