Associate Vendor Manager Interview Experience
It started as an on-campus process, and then suddenly I was in Seattle at HQ doing a live exercise on expanding category assortment after all the leadership-principles interviews.
Interview process
I went through this as an on-campus recruiting process when I was a senior in college. It started with a couple of behavioral rounds on campus, and then the final round was in Seattle at Amazon's headquarters. A big thing I remember is how much the interviews centered on Amazon leadership principles. The final wasn't just more of the same though, because they also had me do a live exercise. So the process felt pretty straightforward structurally, but not like it was only story-based the whole way through.
- Other
- Final round
Interview rounds
1 question across 2 roundsOther
Overview
I went through a couple of on-campus interviews, and they were basically behavioral rounds tied pretty closely to Amazon leadership principles.
Question types asked
Final round
1 questionOverview
The final round was at headquarters in Seattle. Besides more leadership-principles behavioral questions, they had me do a live exercise around expanding category assortment and what I would consider.
Question types asked
Specific questions asked
How would you go about expanding category assortment, and what things would you consider?
I had to talk through how I would expand category assortment and what factors I would look at. I remember it as a live exercise more than a standard interview question. I don't remember the exact structure of my answer now, just that they wanted to see how I thought through the problem in real time rather than just giving a polished behavioral answer.
Interview tips
I'd make sure I had my leadership-principles stories really clean, because that came up throughout the process. I also wouldn't assume it's all behavioral. I'd be ready to work through a business problem live and explain my thinking as I go, because that assortment exercise was a real part of the final.
Company culture
They were clearly hiring this role through a campus pipeline at the time, and it felt pretty formalized. The whole thing was very Amazon in the sense that leadership principles showed up everywhere, even for an associate-level role. At the same time, they didn't rely only on behaviorals. By the final, they wanted to see how I would handle an actual business problem in real time.
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