Amazon Product Manager Interview Experience — Five Rounds, All Behavioral Questions

After one round with the hiring manager, I got the result the next business day: move forward to the virtual onsite. There was almost a month gap after that, so I had plenty of time to prepare. I split the 5 rounds across two days, and it was pure behavioral questions the whole way through. I remembered roughly some of the questions, so sharing them here.

The first one was with the hiring manager. They started by having me ask questions, I asked about 6, and that part took roughly half an hour. Then the leadership principle (LP) they tested was Ownership + Success... I was honestly stunned when I saw "Success" come up, I hadn't prepared for that LP at all, so I had to pull a story from my story bank that was only a rough match and force it to fit. This HM was pretty nice about it, they even accounted for my English not being great and typed the questions directly into the chat so I could read them.

After this round I honestly wasn't sure I'd still make it, but on the principle of not wasting good stories, I went ahead and finished all the interviews anyway. The lesson from this round: you really do need to prepare for every single LP. If you genuinely don't have time, try to write your stories so each one can be stretched to fit 2-3 different LPs, otherwise getting asked an LP you didn't prepare for puts you in a really awkward spot.

The second interviewer was probably someone from the team. They felt pretty checked-out, clearly just killing time, and the call even dropped twice. I don't even remember which LP they were testing. I shared 3-4 stories, then they asked some follow-up questions — there was one question I didn't even understand, and even after they gave an example and explained it, I still didn't get it, so they just gave up. Questions:

1. A time that you conducted root cause analysis on several levels to solve a problem
2. A time that you scaled a solution
3. A time that you convinced others

(Roughly this — I don't remember the exact wording.)

I rested for the night after this one and continued the next day.

The third was probably a Bar Raiser (BR). Really nice person — during the interview they even asked if I wanted a break, and said skipping a question wouldn't affect my score. But I'd seen advice online saying you should answer every question, so I answered all of them properly. Questions:

1. A time you refused or disagreed with your colleagues, what was the compromise? (Bias for Action)
2. A time that you felt strongly about your solution and put your team in a different direction? (Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit)
3. A time that you added a security improvement to an existing system.

Between telling my stories and asking my own questions, it only took 40 minutes, and then we wrapped up early.

The fourth round had two people from the team — one had a technician background, and the other was a shadow who was a vendor PM. The main interviewer asked a ton of follow-up questions, especially on anything I hadn't explicitly covered in my answer (like the challenge I ran into). So my advice: really listen to the whole question and make sure you hit every point when you answer.

1. A project that you integrated several systems/components.
2. A time that you used troubleshooting skills to solve an issue. What was the challenge and how did you overcome it?
3. A time that you solved a complex problem. What made it complex? How did you solve it?
4. A time you made an important decision without your manager's permission.

By the end of this round I had basically run out of stories...

The fifth interviewer was very focused on Customer Obsession questions — they asked 5 of them. I was done. They also asked if there were any highlights I hadn't shared yet, so I gave myself a bit of a shameless plug, haha.

1. A time you gathered requirements. Who / how? Follow-up: how do you ask the right questions? How do you scale it? What are your metrics?
2. A time about customer experience. What did you do and what was the result?
3. A time you served a customer with a unique background.
4. A time you overcame an obstacle. What did you do and how did you overcome it?
5. A time you or your team finished half of a project but realized it was the wrong direction. — For this one I shared my own story about failing to transition into coding, and the interviewer really connected with it, we had good rapport.

I finished the interview on the afternoon of the second business day (around 9:30 AM the hiring manager's local time), and got a positive result that same day.