The Amazon product manager interview, and how to prepare

Amazon's prep pages name these. Product management, stakeholder management and the writing exercise are on both pages. Technical depth is on the PM-T page.

1. Product

   Product management

   The product life cycle from idea to post-launch, your product vision and strategy, how you prioritize, how you use customer feedback and data.

2. PM-T

   Technical depth

   The core technologies in your domain, gaps across features or system architecture, and making the case for a tech product. Amazon's PM-T video says product managers are not expected to code.

3. People

   Stakeholder management

   Bringing different groups to agree on goals, negotiating inside and outside the company, and influencing without formal authority.

4. Writing

   Writing exercise

   You may write about the most innovative project you've worked on, or a time you simplified the lives of customers. Interviewers may discuss it in your final interview.

Why writing matters at Amazon, from its own pages. The prep pages don't say the writing exercise is a PR/FAQ.

1. Memos

   Narratives, not slides

   Amazon writes narrative memos of one to six pages instead of slide decks, often read silently at the start of meetings.

2. PR/FAQ

   Start with the press release

   A Working Backwards excerpt Amazon published describes the PR/FAQ: a press release under one page and an FAQ of five pages or less, written before building.

3. Interview

   Work backwards from the customer

   Amazon's PM-T prep video says interviewers want to hear how you work backwards from the customer to set a product vision, gather requirements and build a roadmap.

1. Step 1

   Apply

   Submit a job application. If you meet the basic qualifications, you're asked to complete a phone screening.

   From Amazon: PM interview prep.

2. Step 2

   Phone screen, 60 minutes

   With a senior leader. Half is behavioral questions on the Leadership Principles. The other half is product management questions, or the technical product life cycle for PM-T. Some teams add a second screen.

   From Amazon: PM interview prep and Amazon: PM-T interview prep.

3. Step 3

   Writing assessment

   If the screen goes well, a recruiter sets up your loop and sends a writing assessment, due two days before the loop.

   From Amazon: PM interview prep.

4. Step 4

   The loop, five 55-minute interviews

   With members of Amazon's product management community, or its technical product management community for PM-T. Different interviewers are assigned to evaluate different competencies.

   From Amazon: PM interview prep and Amazon: PM-T interview prep.

5. Setup

   Zoom, Chime or in person

   Interviews may be remote or in person. Remote ones run on Zoom or Amazon Chime, and your recruiter names the platform. A second Amazonian may shadow, and Amazon says it won't affect the outcome.

   From Amazon: PM interview prep and Amazon: interview loop.

6. Last

   Outcome within 5 business days

   If you haven't heard by then, Amazon says to check in with your recruiter.

   From Amazon: interview loop.

Our advice: work backwards. Name the customer and the problem before any feature.

1. 1

   Amazon: Design a feature that helps Prime members reorder household items they run out of.

   Show follow-ups

   Pick one kind of household first. Say the customer benefit in one line, the way a press release would, before you list features.

   • “How would you know the reminder isn't annoying people?”
   • “What would you leave out of version one?”
2. 2

   Amazon: How would you get more people to make their first purchase by voice with Alexa?

   Show follow-ups

   Trust is the barrier, not the feature list. Start with what stops a first-time buyer, such as not seeing the price or the item.

   • “Which first purchase would you steer people toward?”
   • “What would make you stop the effort?”
3. 3

   Amazon: Design a product for small sellers in their first month on Amazon.

   Show follow-ups

   New sellers have different problems in week one and week four. Pick the moment where most of them get stuck and build for that.

   • “How do you balance the seller's goals with the buyer's?”
   • “What data would tell you a seller is about to quit?”

Our advice: Amazon asks for data in every answer. Name the metric, the guardrail and the decision it drives.

1. 4

   Amazon: How would you measure the success of a new returns option at checkout?

   Show follow-ups

   Pair a customer measure with a cost measure. More returns can mean happier customers and a worse business at the same time.

   • “What is your one north star metric?”
   • “What number would make you roll it back?”
2. 5

   Amazon: Same-day delivery orders in one city fell 8% week over week. How would you investigate?

   Show follow-ups

   Check whether the drop is real before you look for a cause. Then split by product, customer type and delivery window.

   • “What would you tell your director on day one?”
   • “When would you call it a trend?”
3. 6

   A change raises conversion on product pages, but returns rise too. Do you keep it?

   Show follow-ups

   Read why people return before you weigh the totals. Customer Obsession asks leaders to earn and keep customer trust, so weigh that too.

   • “How long would you run the test?”
   • “Who else must agree before you decide?”

Real stories in STAR, each mapped to a principle. Amazon says each interviewer typically asks two or three of these.

1. 7

   How have you used data to develop a strategy?

   Amazon's phone screening page

   Show follow-ups

   Dive Deep and Are Right, A Lot. Name the data, what it changed in your plan, and the result with a number.

   • “What did the data not tell you?”
   • “Who disagreed with your reading?”
2. 8

   Tell me about a time you used customer feedback to change a product decision.

   Show follow-ups

   Customer Obsession. Say how you gathered the feedback and how you weighed it against other priorities.

   • “How many customers did you hear from?”
   • “What did you decide not to change?”
3. 9

   Tell me about a time you took the initiative without being asked.

   Show follow-ups

   Ownership. The strongest version is work outside your scope that mattered to the whole company. Practice it, see a model answer

   • “Whose job was it really?”
   • “What did it cost you to take it on?”
4. 10

   Describe a time the numbers and the stories you were hearing did not match. What did you do?

   Show follow-ups

   Dive Deep, almost word for word. Show how you found which one was wrong. Practice it, see a model answer

   • “Which did you trust first, and why?”
   • “What changed after you found out?”
5. 11

   Tell me about a time you had to make a decision without all the information you wanted.

   Show follow-ups

   Bias for Action. Say why the decision was reversible, or how you made the risk smaller. Practice it, see a model answer

   • “What would have made you wait?”
   • “What did you learn once you had the data?”
6. 12

   Tell me about a time you disagreed with your manager.

   Show follow-ups

   Have Backbone, Disagree and Commit. Show how you pushed back with respect, and what you did once the call was made. Practice it, see a model answer

   • “Were you right in the end?”
   • “How did you support the decision afterward?”
7. 13

   Tell me about a time you failed.

   Show follow-ups

   Earn Trust. Amazon says it's okay to be self-critical. Share what you learned, how you recovered and how you grew. Practice it, see a model answer

   • “Who did you tell first?”
   • “What do you do differently now?”

Our advice: Amazon's PM-T video says PMs are not expected to code but should understand system design and where it limits scale.

1. 14

   Amazon: Walk me through the system behind the delivery date shown on a product page.

   Show follow-ups

   Name the main parts, the data each one needs and where it can fail. Amazon's PM-T tips ask about failure points, bottlenecks and logs.

   • “What happens on the busiest shopping day of the year?”
   • “Which number would you watch to catch a bad estimate?”
2. 15

   Explain how a product recommendation service works to a non-technical leader.

   Show follow-ups

   Keep it to the data in, the ranking and how you check quality, with one example. Then say where it goes wrong.

   • “How would you measure a good recommendation?”
   • “What would you trade for faster results?”
3. 16

   Engineers want to build a new service instead of extending an existing one. What do you ask?

   Show follow-ups

   Ask about functional and non-functional needs, who else depends on the old service, and what each option costs to run.

   • “Which choice is harder to reverse?”
   • “How would you explain the call to your director?”

Amazon says you may be asked to write before the loop, and interviewers may discuss it.

1. 17

   Write about the most innovative project you've worked on.

   Amazon's PM interview prep page

   Show follow-ups

   Amazon asks for clear communication, your full thought process and how you used data. Pick something you drove that was innovative and complex.

   • “Why did you choose this project?”
   • “What would you cut if it had to be half as long?”

• Saying we instead of I

  Amazon asks what you did, not your team. It says I is better than we.

• Staying high level

  Be specific about the decisions you personally made and why. Explain how you delivered the result, not just how the system works.

• No numbers

  Amazon calls itself data-driven. Include metrics and be ready for follow-up questions on them.

• Blaming others

  Don't finger-point or blame-shift when you discuss challenges. Focus on how you found a solution.

• Jumping in before you clarify

  Ask clarifying questions, write down your assumptions and base your approach on them.

• Stories below your level

  A Bar Raiser in Amazon's video says to use examples that fit the level you're interviewing for, and to explain what your result actually meant.

Amazon's own advice first in each week, then our steps, marked as ours.

1. Week 1, Amazon's tips

   Read the principles, then your past

   Read the Leadership Principles without memorizing them. Recall your most memorable work experiences in detail, with the metrics.

   From Amazon: PM interview prep.

2. Week 1, ours

   Build a story bank

   Write one or two stories per principle in STAR. Amazon asks for range: risks, successes, failures and growth. Use recent work, and leave out anything confidential.

3. Week 2, Amazon's tips

   Product and stakeholder rounds

   Prepare to discuss each stage of the product life cycle, your product vision, how you prioritize and how you influenced without authority.

   From Amazon: PM interview prep.

4. Week 2, PM-T

   Technical depth

   Review the core technologies in your domain. Practice clarifying requirements, then weighing options for scale, failure points and operations.

   From Amazon: PM-T interview prep.

5. Week 3, Amazon's tips

   Write the narrative

   Write about something innovative and complex you drove. Show your thinking and your data. Reread it before the loop, since interviewers may ask about it.

   From Amazon: PM interview prep.

6. Week 3, ours

   Run a mock loop out loud

   Answer one question from each group above out loud against a 55-minute clock, get feedback, then answer it again with one change in mind. Test Zoom or Chime the day before.