Interview Experience @ Amazon | GeeksforGeeks

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i would suggest doing any projects will help if you get comfortable instead of changing lanes for example if you are doing in django instead of changing uh you did one easy project in django and then you switched to more note yes that i will do one more easy projecting notice instead uh just build on what you have learned and then increase your level from uh let's say level one to level two level three level four that kind of start doing so even if you mention like easy project in your first interview let's say after six months when you are looking for the next round of interview for different companies you will have that progress to show in your resume which companies usually like [Music] [Applause] [Music] so hello everyone welcome back to geeksforgeeks my name is today we are here with yet another interview experience and today we have abhishek with us who is going to share his interview experience at amazon so yes without any further ado just let me add him to the stream hi abhishek how are you doing i'm doing it yes so let's start by having a brief introduction about you so that the audience connects with you better okay so i'm a 2021 graduate i have done my computer science engineering from uh [Music] that is really great so can you tell about your coding journey like how did you get interested in coding was it from school or did you get interested in it after joining college how is it how has the journey been basically okay so my quoting your name it's not like i after i started after i joined college it's not like that uh more of like since i was in 10th i was from uh icsc so there we have what we call bluej or blue java what we used to call it so from there it kind of felt more of like a home that just in this field i can we can write code and then we can also check which is quite not possible if you uh let's say if you do any practicals in physics or chemistry it's quite not possible to see the result on your own but when you do programming uh you can just compile and see the results so that what fascinated me at that time and i just carried it forward towards my 112th and then after joining college also yeah so being an ics student even i could relate like even i did like compute i took computer science from class ninth and then java blue jays so it has been a part of my journey since school only yeah also coming to amazon interview experience that this webinar is about can you tell how many rounds did you go through and a brief about each and every round that you went to visit okay uh so there were like four interview rounds uh one online assessment which which is common everyone has to go through uh after clearing that uh there will be four interview schedules uh two were like scheduled at one time and then after one and then after one so it's like two plus one plus one kind of format uh the two which is scheduled uh that are supposed to happen even if you failed your first interview so that's why i said two plus one plus one uh the first two uh we're more of like technical uh which is uh what they call and third one is like managerial and fourth one is like bar razor uh it is supposed to happen in this but uh in my case it is sort of like happening jumble type of form my manager will ask my managerial round was taken before my technical uh because maybe some bandwidth is used but if you take into general consideration uh because i have given amazon interviews before also so first rounds are technical then after that managerial and then after that but so i think it depends from person to person and from interview to interviewer because like being in incoming amazon interns so like my rounds were totally different like i had two interviews and another online assessment so i think it depends on the role and uh like interviewer as well right so the next thing yeah yeah continue yep so basically i was trying to say that uh it mostly uh depends on uh on what variety basis they are having if it's like they want the uh they want you to join as soon as possible then they will they might post interviews fast other than that they will like take their time right also the next thing i wanted to ask is a resume so we all know that resume is something that plays a very important role you know because it is something that reaches to the company before we even reach to the company so can you tell what all did you do in your resume that helped your resume stand out from the rest of the resumes that are there okay so uh my resume has like sections uh there is also one popular format on internet for overleaf i don't remember the exact name uh it's like a google selected uh format kind of thing i usually uh choose that uh it has like sections uh example extract not extracurricular activities it's like uh my achievements uh there is one section uh i was like part of team which won sis 29 2019 also so i kind of put that in achievements that put a quite good impression on the interviewer uh apart from that i also put there my freelancing experience because i have like one year of freelancing experience where i delivered like five plus projects uh all full stack with the help of my friend um so that's it and other than that i had like lots of projects in my resume uh if you can see i don't know i don't have in this laptop uh but um it has like one whole complete uh half of the pages completely dedicated to projects because uh for initial uh uh for initial students uh like us uh there are no there are no what you can say exp real experience that you can mention in your resume if it is if we have been like working for like five years or ten years then we can mention our experience but if not then uh they're only uh that then it only boils down to two things either you can showcase your interview experience what we have done if not then you can showcase your projects so i usually follow this kind of stuff yeah i think projects play a very important role like you can like i have seen some of the interviewers talk about like few of the projects in like in the entire interview okay so can you talk a bit about the projects that you worked on and what all projects did you add in your resume okay so uh for projects i have i have done like more than 10 projects during my college time but i usually mention those which are live and already i have the public link with me and also on my github so i usually do that one is like order management system which i did and one is like chat room which i did and apart from that but generally uh what i have seen because i have mentioned like i have done five plus projects in freelancing uh they tend to ask questions related to that uh the projects which i have delivered during those time so the projects which i wrote there uh was like uh the most challenging one was to create an uh emr electronic medical record which was which which i did during covet so that was quite a uh what you can say uh difficult you know simple but complex tasks so it kind of like uh you can solve it but it takes time so like is it okay if you work on simpler projects but like we're working on it from scratch but simpler projects do you recommend doing complex projects or simpler projects if we are appearing for amazon okay so uh simple in the terms uh definitely you can uh do any kind of project because doing projects gives you experience uh that you will be doing in your uh day-to-day activities at amazon or let's say any funk if you are targeting or now we call it because our facebook name has been changed so uh i would suggest doing any projects will help uh if you get comfortable uh instead of changing lanes for example if you are doing in django instead of changing uh you did one easy project in django and then use this to know note yes that i will do one more easy project in node.js instead uh just build on what you have learned and then increase your level from let's say level one two level two level three level four that kind of will start doing so even if you mention like easy project uh in your first interview uh let's say after six months when you are sitting for the next round of interview uh for different companies you will have that progress to so in your resume which companies usually like i totally agree with you so we have discussed about projects so now it comes to data structures so in the entire process what importance did data structure play and how did you prepare for them can you talk a bit about that okay so if i talk in quantitative terms if i have to give like percentage of how important it is uh i will say uh data structure play a very important role at least in amazon which because i have given it recently and one more time before uh like 70 to 80 percent your interview will be around data structure and rest it may be around lp we call it uh or you can say behavioral questions or whatever you want to name it but it's like you call it lp and then [Music] it boils down to projects or any theoretical subjects or any kind of that questions so df is important right even i agree like even when i get my amazon interview like the the initial one r was just data structure and algorithm questions and then the last uh 15 20 minutes he asked me questions around theory subjects and my project so his data structures play a very important role if you're talking specifically about amazon right right so the next thing is referrals so many people have this doubt that does amazon hire through referral or no so can you tell us about that okay so uh when i'm talking about myself i have like as i told earlier i had given interviews before one time before also just after completing my college uh for intensive plus ppu i wasn't able to went through that was through referral but this time um it was more of like direct to applying to the portal so in both the cases i got the uh call for interviews so i think uh referral yeah it does help but if your resume is strong they uses some kind of software i think to select candidates for next round right i think also referral can help you maybe cross the resume selection phase or maybe the initial phases but eventually like the other rounds you have to give so yeah so the next thing is according to you what are uh three of the most commonly mistakes that students do in an interview maybe not specific to amazon but any three of the commonly made mistakes that you did yourself or you saw your friends do okay so um i have also failed so i can uh give you my perspective uh with what i learned from my failure is that uh keep two things in mind i don't have 13 uh but if i get along the way while giving you this to i can add that other two things which i can tell you definitely is uh don't under prepare yourself that means you may have solved 200 questions on lead code maybe all lc hard but you may still not be able to solve the question which interviewer gave you and in my case this time um i had not solved more than 60 or 70 questions only it could till now even after my four years of college uh but i was able to solve all the questions that interviewer gave me and also uh just to give you the perspective that doesn't mean i don't solve questions it's just that uh i haven't submitted the questions on lead code that's why the number is quite less uh but if you talk about me i have sold more than 400 to 500 questions uh combined on geekbloggs lead code uh interview bit and then whatsapp so it's not like i was only doing in lead code that's why then which is less so don't think like only solving lc hard 500 questions will get to the job it's not that and second thing i will say uh don't over prepare yourself uh that means let's say if you want to give your interview when it were asked to schedule it in let's say after 15 days don't just uh undermine yourself and then think you can't give prepare for a certain amount of time and then have confidence yourself that you can crack uh because sometimes what we tend to do is just prepare for 15 days 20 days 30 days it just never ends because concepts are very vast and the topics that you can learn in those time [Music] when i was in my initial year so i used to think that if i'll solve you know 600 or 700 questions then i'll get selected in every company that i want but actually this is not the case even if you are solving 100 250 quality questions i think that is more than enough to attack any quality more than quantity basically yep but um uh for that the third thing i can tell you is that just after conversing with you the third mistake which i used to do uh was like uh i tend to prepare wrong things or what you can say my strategy was wrong at that time because as you were saying that uh quantity sorry quality matters over quantity uh but at what point of time in interviews it matters because uh when we talk about we are starting to prepare ourselves for interviews that means let's see i have just submitted my resume and hope and i am hoping that i will get calls for interviews so it will take around two months or three months to let even start any sort of assessment it happens sometimes so uh if we think of this three months then definitely quality questions will help you because if you look for quantity then uh at the time of interviews you will definitely forgot everything what you have learned so it's of no use uh but at the time of giving interviews let's say your first round is today and then second round is tomorrow and then around is day after day if you look for quality in during this times then you will definitely not be able to cover all those things which you have prepared previously so in this times uh look for more quantity i will suggest uh look for past 50 top 50 questions top 100 questions and try to cover as much as possible because that will kind of give you the idea of what kind of questions you are going to solve i think starting early can really help a lot like if a student starts from first year or second year itself then you know he or she can have both quality and quantity over the course of four years yes so my last question and this is one of my favorite question because students generally do not know how to write code in an interview right writing code on code forces or lead code is very different to what you write in an interview so can you give some suggestions like what should we do while we are writing code in an interview like how should we do the entire thing okay but during interviews uh i can suggest like don't use [Music] variable names like inter in b and c because it gives very long impression on interview solving fast is good but solving fast on the expense of code quality is very bad because the first thing any fung or what company will see is like how well you write code because writing code is like only 10 to 12 30 to 40 tasks in in this company even what i have experienced till now reading code is more of a burden to you than writing code so let's say you write a code and then post it to development after three to four months even you will not under you even you will not understand why why have you written this or why you haven't gone with other kind of approach so the interview sees this very clearly so using appropriate variable names along with using appropriate function name and then what you say writing your code in modular way instead of dumping your whole code in one function try to decompose it into different functions or better if you have time or let's say you saw the interviewer ask you the question which you have already solved and you know the complete answer in order of let's say the best time complicit and space complexity that it can be solved so the best thing you can do uh is create a class create instance of class and then write member methods for it and then write in such a way that it's production ready so that creates a very good emphasis yes i think these were a very important tips like whosoever is watching this please keep these these points in mind while you are writing an interview right so these were all the questions for myself thank you so much for doing this webinar i hope it helps a lot of students who are watching this particular webinar thank you so much for coming to geeksforgeeks thank you bye