YT YouTube2Text

YouTube2Text → Transcripts → The Amazon Writing Exercise Explained: What It Is, How to Nail It, and How Much It Matters

The Amazon Writing Exercise Explained: What It Is, How to Nail It, and How Much It Matters — Transcript

by Amazon Bound · 2,173 words · 324 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

Open in transcriber Summarize with AI Download SRT/VTT

Full transcript

0:00Hey there, I'm Nick, a former Amazon bar
0:02raiser. And in this video, I'll describe
0:05what the writing exercises that Amazon
0:08gives to its senior level candidates.
0:10You will learn one what the writing
0:13exercise is, two what types of writing
0:15exercises there are, three how important
0:19the writing exercise is in the context
0:21of the rest of your interview process.
0:23And four, and most importantly, how to
0:26ace your writing exercise without
0:28stressing out. All right, let's start
0:30with the basics. One, what is the
0:33writing exercise? There's a lot of other
0:35information on this online, so I'm going
0:36to fly through the basics here. Amazon
0:39requires level six and higher level
0:42candidates to submit a written response
0:46to a prompt before their interview
0:48loops. And usually Amazon makes
0:52extending an offer to these candidates
0:54contingent on them having submitted such
0:57a written response. Why that is
0:59important for Amazon is because Amazon
1:01is a very writingheavy culture. Amazon
1:04engages in narratives, written
1:05documents, so on and so forth. and they
1:07want to assess your level of proficiency
1:09before you become an Amazonian. Now,
1:12let's cover the basics of what to do and
1:14what not to do. The writing must be your
1:17own. You cannot use AI or a ghostriter
1:20to help you with it. You should write in
1:23a narrative pros. Do not use bullets or
1:26tables or abbreviations or quote your
1:30site your sources. I've seen that happen
1:32a lot, too.
1:34Don't include any confidential
1:36information in your answer. Just pick
1:39one of usually two prompts that Amazon
1:42will have you choose from and answer
1:45these prompts in writing. Don't worry
1:49about having to complete the writing
1:51exercise in one sitting. It's not timed.
1:54So, you can start it, you can go back to
1:56it, so on and so forth until you
1:57finished. But usually try to send the
2:01completed writing exercise to Amazon
2:03within a few days before your interview
2:05loop to give people the opportunity to
2:07read it before they interview you. Part
2:10two is what types of writing exercises
2:12there are. There is the classic writing
2:15exercise and there's also the outlier
2:18type of writing exercises. I'm going to
2:20cover all of those in a lot of detail
2:23next. Let's do the classic writing
2:25exercise first. That would be Amazon
2:28asking you to choose one of two
2:30questions. Either describe the most
2:32creative professional thing you've done
2:34or describe a time when you did not have
2:36enough data and you had to go with your
2:38gut. So you have to choose one of these
2:41two questions and respond to them in a
2:44narrative written format within a
2:46certain number of word limit and submit
2:49that exercise before your interview
2:51loop. The second type of writing
2:53exercises are a bit trickier and those
2:57happen for teams where narrative pros is
3:01less important than other functional
3:04technical competencies. Specifically,
3:06AWS solution architects are frequently
3:10asked to submit a presentation with a
3:13schematic of an architecture that
3:15they've had to deploy. or if you are in
3:18a more creative field such as if you are
3:21a designer, a UX UI designer, or if
3:24you're an artist in a video game or in
3:28some other visual part of the company,
3:30or if you're an animator, so on and so
3:32forth, you would be usually asked to
3:36bring your portfolio with you and walk
3:38the team through that portfolio. I'll
3:41describe how to knock out of the park
3:43each of these types of writing exercises
3:46soon. But before I do that, I want to
3:48cover part three, which is describe how
3:51important the writing exercise is in the
3:53context of the rest of your interview
3:55process. Believe it or not, the writing
3:57exercise is not that important. I would
4:00say that it contributes to about 3% of
4:03your overall hiring decision. The
4:05writing exercise is not a pass fail
4:08test. It's an assessment. It's not going
4:11to get you hired on its own. It will
4:14never be the case where if you submit
4:17this sterling writing exercise, Amazon's
4:20response would be, "Whoa, you know, hold
4:22the bus. Let's hire Nick and cancel his
4:25upcoming interview loop because his
4:27writing exercise was so amazing."
4:29They're never going to do that.
4:31Conversely, you need to do an incredibly
4:34poor job in your writing exercise for
4:35Amazon to not hire you because of it.
4:38Think of the writing exercise as an
4:40assessment. They want to see your
4:43progress. They want to see your level of
4:45proficiency in writing. Similarly to if
4:48you have a kid and they have to go from
4:50elementary school to middle school or
4:52what have you. Some schools would ask
4:54them to take assessments in reading,
4:57writing, math, so on and so forth. These
4:59schools want to see how advanced the kid
5:02is and how to place them. It's very
5:04similar with the Amazon writing
5:06exercise. In fact, some of the
5:08interviewers on your loop might not even
5:10have read the writing exercise. Usually,
5:12one interviewer is assigned to quiz you
5:16and ask you questions on your writing
5:18exercise, but sometimes even that
5:20doesn't happen. So, you as a candidate
5:23after you submit your writing exercise,
5:25it's totally fine to describe the same
5:28professional accomplishment that you've
5:29used in your writing exercise as an
5:31answer to one of the interview
5:32questions. just check with the
5:34interviewer, say, "Hey, I've already
5:35submitted this as my writing exercise,
5:37this response. Is it okay for me to give
5:39you that same answer?" And nine times
5:41out of 10, they're going to say, "Yeah,
5:42go ahead and do that." And in order for
5:44you to be mindful of if there might be a
5:48separate interviewer looking at your
5:50writing exercise later, I would give
5:52your writing exercise response maybe in
5:55the second half of the loop. For the AWS
5:58solution architect writing exercises and
6:01the more creative roles writing
6:02exercises, the writing exercise is more
6:05important than 3% for sure. Maybe it's
6:08in the 10 to 15 percentile range. And
6:11for those writing exercises, the whole
6:13team would witness it in one of your
6:17interview slots. Usually Amazon, if five
6:20people are interviewing you in your
6:21Amazon loop, there'll be a sixth slot
6:24for one hour where the whole loop is
6:27going to attend and you're going to
6:29present to them your AWS solution
6:32architect schematic or your portfolio if
6:35you're a creative candidate, so on and
6:36so forth. So for those writing exercise
6:39equivalents, it's more important to do a
6:41good job than just a mere 3%. And I'm
6:44going to describe to you how to do that
6:46next. So that's part four. How to ace
6:49your writing exercise. I'm going to cut
6:51this answer in two parts. The classic
6:54exercise, writing exercise, and the AWS
6:57solution architect and creative writing
6:59exercise. Let's start with the classic
7:01writing exercise. Let that writing
7:04exercise response be a byproduct of the
7:08rest of your interview preparation. I
7:10have described in other videos how it's
7:14very helpful to put together a matrix
7:16with your professional accomplishments
7:18and failures on the one side and with
7:20Amazon's leadership principles on the
7:22other side and make sure that you map
7:24those accomplishments and failures
7:26against which leadership principles they
7:28demonstrate. And if you do that and if
7:31you practice answering and describing
7:34those accomplishments verbally, all you
7:36have to do in order to ace your writing
7:38exercise is pluck the star response that
7:43manifests that illustrates the right
7:45leadership principle that Amazon is
7:47asking you for. Usually in the two
7:50classic interview writing exercise
7:52questions, Amazon would ask you one
7:55describe the most creative professional
7:57thing you've done. That is usually the
8:00response to your invented simplify or
8:04your think big leadership principle or
8:06Amazon would ask you tell me a time when
8:08you did not have enough data and you had
8:11to go by your gut. That usually is your
8:14answer to the right a lot leadership
8:16principle. So if you do the heavy
8:19lifting and you prepare your 25 30
8:23answer portfolio of professional
8:25accomplishments and failures, the
8:27writing exercise just falls off as a
8:30byproduct of that. You get one of those
8:33star responses. You commit it to
8:35writing. You type it out in the in the
8:38requirements they've given you in terms
8:40of word count, so on and so forth. you
8:42put it in a narrative format and you'll
8:44be in a really great shape for your
8:46writing exercise. Now, let's talk about
8:49the outlier writing exercises. The AWS
8:51solution architect presentation and the
8:53creative roles portfolio presentation.
8:56For the AWS solution architect roles,
8:59Amazon would, as I mentioned, frequently
9:01substitute a written narrative
9:03submission with a presentation where you
9:06have to describe a time when you have
9:10deployed some sort of architecture to
9:13resolve a challenge for a customer, for
9:15an account that you've worked with
9:17because they're going to expect you to
9:18do that on the job much more so than
9:21write in pros. So, a lot of these teams
9:24that expect you to do that, they would
9:25give you very clear requirements of what
9:28that presentation needs to look like,
9:30they're frequently going to limit the
9:32number of slides you can use to three,
9:34four, five slides. And they're going to
9:36tell you that you have to uh present
9:39this presentation to the whole team in
9:43about 60 minutes. and they would expect
9:45you to complete your presentation part
9:48in about maybe 30 minutes and leave the
9:51rest of the time for questions and
9:53answers. If you hear this type of
9:56feedback and those types of
9:57instructions, I would make sure to in
10:01the three or four very tight slides that
10:05you use to describe your architecture, I
10:08would make sure to hit the following
10:10main points. One, describe why this
10:13deployment was important, what was at
10:15stake. Two, and three, show the before
10:18and after state, how things used to look
10:21like before you jumped in and you were
10:23asked to put out the fire. And then in
10:25the third slide, what you did after the
10:28fact in order to resolve the situation
10:30and answer the so what question. And
10:32then optionally there could be a fourth
10:34slide and I highly recommend it where
10:36you would show the interview loop how
10:40you would have used AWS's technology if
10:43you could in case you didn't use AWS in
10:46your final resolution. So it's quite
10:49okay to have schematics for the most
10:52part in all of those slides with some
10:55maybe major highlights of areas in that
10:58schematic that you want the interview
11:00loop to see. But yeah, use schematics,
11:03keep it to three or four slides. It's
11:05totally fine to have a number of other
11:08slides in your appendix and think of
11:11those other slides as specific questions
11:14that the loop might ask you and answers
11:18and illustrations to those core key
11:21frequently asked questions that were a
11:23part of your implementation. And that
11:26would come across if you do it that way,
11:28uh your presentation would come across
11:30very professionally because you would
11:32only cover either three or four slides
11:34in the beginning of your presentation
11:35and then when the Q&A part comes and the
11:39team starts peppering you with
11:40questions, you just say, "Ah, you know,
11:42great question. Let me scroll to slide
11:44eight." And here you can actually see
11:46how I've actually responded and and
11:48tackled this question and what the
11:50solution is that I've come up with.
11:52Amazon uses that practice a lot. They
11:56have the six-page narrative and which is
11:58limited and the subsequent appendices
12:02and appendix slides which could be
12:04completely without an end sometimes it
12:07feels like. So follow that approach for
12:09your AWS solution architect
12:11presentation. For a creative role
12:14presentation follow a similar approach.
12:17If you are a UX designer, bring concepts
12:22and work representative of different
12:24stages in your professional development.
12:26Here's maybe a few slides from the best
12:29accomplishments early in your career and
12:31then here's how your work evolved later
12:33on. If you're an artist, bring different
12:37again representations of your diversity
12:40and breath as a professional. Maybe show
12:43them some concept art, show them some 3D
12:46art, show them character art, show them
12:492D art, so on and so forth. If you are
12:52an animator, similarly, show them
12:55different styles of
12:57animation and give people a full
13:00perspective of the diversity and the
13:03proudest accomplishments in your
13:05portfolio. Fla these proudly and be
13:08ready to answer questions when asked.
13:10All right, and that's that. That's all
13:12you need to know to ace your Amazon
13:14writing exercise. It's not a secret
13:16test. It's just another way that Amazon
13:18evaluates your proficiency and assesses
13:20where you are. All right. Now that you
13:22know what it takes to produce a
13:24outstanding writing exercise, you should
13:26watch this video here next where I will
13:28walk you step by step through how much
13:31AI can you use as you prepare for your
13:34Amazon interview loop.

About this transcript

This page contains the full transcript of The Amazon Writing Exercise Explained: What It Is, How to Nail It, and How Much It Matters by Amazon Bound, generated from the public captions YouTube serves with the video. The transcript has 2,173 words across 324 segments, with the original timestamps preserved so you can click any line to jump to that moment in the embedded player.

What you can do with it

Use the transcript to take notes, quote the speaker, build a study guide, generate a summary with ChatGPT or Claude via the YouTube Summary tool, or export it as a timed subtitle file with YouTube to SRT. You can also re-open it in the transcriber to translate the transcript into 100+ languages.

Free YouTube transcript tool

YouTube2Text is a free YouTube transcript generator — no signup, no daily limit. Paste any YouTube link and get the full transcript instantly, with timestamps, click-to-jump, translation to 100+ languages, AI prompts for ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, and exports to TXT, SRT, VTT, or Markdown.