[mabbo]

> Tip #7. It is OK to use the same story for all your interviews. Usually, a good life story covers several leadership principles they want to hear.

I strongly advise against this, especially for Amazon.

We read each other's notes in the debrief. If we all see the same story, questions arise about experience. Have some variety. If you think the same story will answer all questions, it had better be one hell of a story.

[tyingq]

Often the interviewers ask variations of the same question. Variations of "What's your weak spot?", "Tell me about an example where you coached someone", "Walk me through an ethical dilemma you've had", "Why do you want to work here" and so on. Seems unfair to penalize for "same story" when there's "same question".

[glenngillen]

These aren’t examples of questions you’ll get in the Amazon interview process. It’s also 4-8hrs of interviews just for the final loop. So you’ll get some overlap, but also literally hours of other topics. If hours of conversation are anchored to the same single event it’s unlikely to reflect well.

[tyingq]

I wonder if anyone's ever tracked the eventual career trajectory for candidates they hired versus ones they rejected in interviews. This process sounds like it selects for people comfortable with the somewhat rare skillset of sweating hours of face-to-face quizzing without breaking.

[glassconclusion]

I think a better comparison would be how much effort a candidate puts into finding a better job.

People willing to grind leetcode, send out 400+ resumes, doing a lot of interviews will probably have a better career than the one's who don't.

[tyingq]

For a very narrow definition of "better career" maybe. I concede that it might result in more wealth.

[mabbo]

5 hours max these days unless it's for a very senior role.

Every interviewer has a leadership principal or two they need to get data points about. And there's a database of questions to ask that help specifically learn about that LP.

And it all has to fit inside the same hour as a technical question.

[ABeeSea]

Yea Amazon cares about how you work when doing the interviews and not just your technical ability. A lack of clear evidence demonstrating those inter-personal skills will be no hire. It’s really unlikely a single story will provide enough evidence demonstrating those skills so it’s really an unnecessary way to handicap yourself.