David Markley worked at Amazon for seven years and conducted over 500 job interviews.
Markley said he would often choose candidates with behavioral aspects over ones with experience.
He says there are several ways for “inclined to hire” candidates to lock in a job offer at Amazon.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with David Markley, a 58-year-old former Amazon employee, based in Seattle. It’s been edited for length and clarity.
During my seven years at Amazon, I conducted over 500 interviews and earned my title as a bar raiser, an objective, third-party interviewer tasked with finding applicants who would “raise the bar” at the company.
I’d give one, or sometimes more than one, applicant an “inclined to hire” status, following a series of in-person interviews. This meant the person was a fit for the role and likely to be hired.
If I were deciding between two candidates, I was often more likely to choose the one who ranked higher in the behavioral aspects over the person with more experience. However, getting an “inclined to hire” status didn’t automatically mean they’d receive an offer.
There are a few ways that I recommend candidates turn an inclined to hire status into a full-time offer at Amazon.
I’ve found that behavioral aspects and a strong exhibition of Amazon’s leadership principles — have backbone, disagree, and commit — are of greater importance than hard skills.
To demonstrate behavioral skills, read through all of the leadership principles and think about how they apply to your own life. Those are the stories that an interviewer is going to want to discuss with you and learn more about.
Don’t make any stories up, because a good interviewer will be asking deep questions to understand how you handled a situation.
If you’re “inclined to hire” for an engineer L2 role, look for other engineer L2 job openings within the company and point them out to your recruiter. Express your interest and ask if there’s a hiring manager who can look at your résumé.
Recruiters want to get people hired, so even though they’ll primarily focus on hiring for the team they support, they should be motivated to help you look into other opportunities.
You can also pursue other roles on your own. If you see an adjacent role open in another department and there is a recruiter contact, you can contact that recruiter to tell them about your status and your interest in the role. You can also direct them to the recruiter you’ve been working with so they can speak internally about where to place you.
