[amzn_thrwy_158]

Calling them behavioral questions makes it sound like a psychology experiment. What it actually is is a way to get candidates to talk about specific situations they've encountered in their careers and how they handled them. Different interviewers have different principles to focus on, so it prevents them from covering the same territory.

Amazon has its problems, but the interview process has always felt pretty fair to me, and I've been on both sides of it.

That said: I would never, ever, ask a candidate to tell me about their biggest failure. Jesus fuck that's a landmine. What happens when you expect them to say "I championed the use of TCL as our primary systems language", but they actually say "I got drunk, crashed the car, and killed my fiancee". Yikes.

[eitally]

It's formally called "Targeted Selection" and is a superset of behavioral interviewing, with some additional structure wrapping it. It works well and is much better than what most companies do.

[cthalupa]

That's why you ask for "Biggest /career/ failure"