Best Approach For The Amazon Interview Writing Exercise Sample Answered By Ex-Amazon Sr Executive — Transcript

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1. 0:00If you're looking at this video, you are
2. 0:02probably trying to find the secrets to
3. 0:03the Amazon writing assignment. And what
4. 0:04I'm going to tell you, it's not been
5. 0:06said in well, I clicked on five of the
6. 0:08top videos for that search term on
7. 0:09YouTube. Welcome back to Interview,
8. 0:11where we teach you how to use Amazon
9. 0:12leadership principles to land your dream
10. 0:14job. And in these office hour videos,
11. 0:15what I do is I focus on questions that I
12. 0:17get during the follow-up sessions from
13. 0:18the free mock interviews that we do at
14. 0:20interview.com. And one of those
15. 0:21questions was about the writing
16. 0:22assignment. And yeah, I did a search and
17. 0:24I spent a whole 15 or 20 minutes
18. 0:27watching the top five videos. And
19. 0:29there's some really good content out
20. 0:30there. Uh the Amazon interview whiz, I
21. 0:32think her name is Gigi. Good content,
22. 0:34good talk about structure and how to
23. 0:36think about it. Uh Holly Lee, a former
24. 0:38recruiter. Uh okay, decent content. Dan
25. 0:40Crider, never worked at Amazon, but
26. 0:42okay, decent content. But I
27. 0:45I I'm going to break the bank. For many
28. 0:48of you, this video will get literally
29. 0:51tens, maybe hundreds of views cuz I
30. 0:52don't have the same audience. But that's
31. 0:55okay. Okay, for the few of you who found
32. 0:56this, what I'm about to tell you is
33. 0:58going to put you into a much different
34. 1:00stratosphere in terms of how your
35. 1:01writing assignment is assessed. And
36. 1:03here's the thing, Amazon focuses on the
37. 1:05leadership principles. You know this,
38. 1:07you understand this. And what is the
39. 1:09number one Amazon leadership principle?
40. 1:10Customer obsession. So, how can you
41. 1:12demonstrate that you are customer
42. 1:14obsessed about working at Amazon?
43. 1:17Think about it. How could you do that
44. 1:18with your writing assignment?
45. 1:21Writing at Amazon, super critical. If
46. 1:23you're gonna have a meeting at Amazon,
47. 1:24there's a document driving that meeting.
48. 1:25It's because you're making a decision.
49. 1:27Every meeting at Amazon revolves around
50. 1:28a document. They don't use PowerPoint. I
51. 1:31I thought that was crazy when I first
52. 1:32went to Amazon. I was coming from
53. 1:34Microsoft. I thought, "Oh my god,
54. 1:34Microsoft is driven on PowerPoint. How
55. 1:36am I going to survive?" And it turns out
56. 1:37it's just a much better way to
57. 1:38communicate. But that's neither here nor
58. 1:39there. But just remember, writing is
59. 1:41super critical. It's why they have the
60. 1:42writing assignment. And yet, none of the
61. 1:44videos are about to tell you what I'm
62. 1:45about to tell you. Okay. Here's how you
63. 1:48solve the problem of I aced the writing
64. 1:50interview. Do it in the FAQ format. Do
65. 1:53it in the FAQ format. Well, what is the
66. 1:55FAQ format? There are so many videos
67. 1:57about Amazon and the writing and the
68. 2:00documents inside the company. There's
69. 2:01plenty of videos. This is not a secret
70. 2:03how they run their company. Every
71. 2:04meeting starts with a document. What is
72. 2:07the problem we're here to solve? Who is
73. 2:08the customer? Why is this important? Why
74. 2:10haven't we solved it before? What
75. 2:11resources we need? It's a set of FAQ
76. 2:12questions. It's the questions that you
77. 2:14should be able to answer for yourself in
78. 2:15order to drive to a decision. That's it.
79. 2:18It's a digital artifact that can live on
80. 2:19beyond the meeting so that someone who
81. 2:20wasn't there can read the document and
82. 2:21understand the discussion that was had
83. 2:22in the room. That's why they do it. But
84. 2:24here is the thing about all of the
85. 2:25advice I see on the internet about these
86. 2:27writing assignments. None of them
87. 2:28suggest you do this one thing which is
88. 2:30you understand how Amazon operates. Give
89. 2:32them a document in a format that they
90. 2:34understand. It will floor them. Floor
91. 2:37them. How do I know this? Here's the
92. 2:40funny thing. Uh when I left Amazon, I
93. 2:44I've helped a variety of companies in
94. 2:46working with Amazon and one of them was
95. 2:47trying to go and negotiate better terms
96. 2:49on uh some items that they were selling
97. 2:50through their Amazon store and there was
98. 2:51some bunch of problems. We led the
99. 2:53meeting with an Amazon formatted
100. 2:55document. It was such a better
101. 2:57discussion. They wanted to show up with
102. 2:58a crazy PowerPoint and a bunch of slides
103. 2:59blah blah. That's not how Amazon
104. 3:01operates. So when your customer obsessed
105. 3:03about Amazon, you say to yourself, I
106. 3:04really want to work here. Write the
107. 3:07document in the format that they expect.
108. 3:10that's how they run all their meetings.
109. 3:11So why not do exactly that? So look it
110. 3:14the the question that you get and and I
111. 3:16looked I actually found my writing
112. 3:18sample from greater than 10 years ago.
113. 3:20Um but the question was what is the most
114. 3:23innovative or inventive thing you've
115. 3:24ever built? Okay. I think they still use
116. 3:26that question if I'm being honest which
117. 3:28speaks to the the longevity and the
118. 3:29durability of the process. But I think
119. 3:32of it as a star format because it's just
120. 3:34an interview question. So yes GG is
121. 3:36correct. Star format. situation, task,
122. 3:39action, result. That's how you should
123. 3:41think about your content. But
124. 3:44frame the document around the structure
125. 3:47of an FAQ. So in terms of how you think
126. 3:49about the questions you're going to ask,
127. 3:51number one question, what is the problem
128. 3:53we're trying to solve and for what
129. 3:54customer? Right? Start with that and
130. 3:56from there your questions will follow.
131. 3:58Set up the situation and task. Why was
132. 4:00this problem important? Why hadn't it
133. 4:02been solved in the past? How was this
134. 4:03impacting customers? How did we know it
135. 4:04was a problem? How did it surface the
136. 4:06team? There's a bunch of questions you
137. 4:07can ask yourself, right? Just list out
138. 4:09the questions. Don't worry about the
139. 4:10writing just yet. The action, what did
140. 4:11you do? Why was this the task or the the
141. 4:13path that you chose? What alternatives
142. 4:15did you consider and reject? How did you
143. 4:16know you were going to be successful?
144. 4:17What telemetry or data or framework did
145. 4:19you put in place to measure the results
146. 4:21of what you were trying to do along the
147. 4:22way? Who did you consult outside of your
148. 4:24team to determine if this was the right
149. 4:25path? What resources did you need to
150. 4:26bring in? How could you have done this
151. 4:28for less resources given, you know, the
152. 4:29the value of hindsight? Okay. And then
153. 4:31the result. What happened? Why was it
154. 4:33good? How do you know it was still good?
155. 4:34What are the long-term results? How did
156. 4:36what did you learn from this? What did
157. 4:37the company take away from the set of
158. 4:38questions? Write out all the questions.
159. 4:41Just list them out. Number one rule at
160. 4:43Amazon, you either have a two-page
161. 4:44document or a six-page document. This
162. 4:46writing assignment is a two-page
163. 4:47document. Max. Max. That's it. And every
164. 4:50document at Amazon should be as long as
165. 4:52it needs to be, but not one word longer,
166. 4:54which means write everything out,
167. 4:56ruthlessly edit, get rid of all
168. 4:58superlatives. It was unbelievably large
169. 5:02growth. No, we had growth of and then
170. 5:04use a metric. That's the Amazon way.
171. 5:06They don't want superlatives. They want
172. 5:08data. We grew at 15% is very different
173. 5:10than we had amazing growth. Uh
174. 5:12year-over-year was, you know, we did
175. 5:14some amount blah blah blah blah blah.
176. 5:16You can use a lot of words versus we had
177. 5:1815% year-over-year growth. It's a
178. 5:20metric. It's clear. There's no
179. 5:21superlatives. Move on. So again, to sum
180. 5:24up, this is the path to your success in
181. 5:26your writing assignment. Demonstrate
182. 5:28that you are customer obsessed by
183. 5:29delivering the document in the format
184. 5:31that Amazon expects. Two, contain the
185. 5:35information. I guess the word is
186. 5:36constrain the information to the length
187. 5:38that they would expect for such a thing.
188. 5:40Two pages. You don't need more than that
189. 5:41to talk through whatever writing
190. 5:42assignment you have. Three, make sure
191. 5:45you write well. That's super important.
192. 5:46So, write a lot and then trim down
193. 5:48because that's how you're going to get
194. 5:49your best ideas. Four, follow the STAR
195. 5:51format because it's just this is an an
196. 5:54interview question in written form. So,
197. 5:55you want to follow the same format and
198. 5:57progress linearly through the story uh
199. 5:59to communicate what it is you're trying
200. 6:00to communicate, but do so in a way
201. 6:01that's easy to follow. And five, this is
202. 6:04critically important. Use metrics, but
203. 6:06also avoid superlatives. Because when
204. 6:08you do that, you are speaking to your
205. 6:11customer, Amazon, in a language they
206. 6:13understand, in a format they understand,
207. 6:16in the expectation and hope that you
208. 6:18convince them you can work there. If you
209. 6:21do this, your writing sample will stand
210. 6:23out. That is a lock. It's a lock.