AMAZON

TECHNICAL PROGRAM MANAGER

LEADERSHIP PRINCIPLES

 Consider how the Leadership Principles apply to your previous experience.

 Amazon assesses all candidates on our Leadership Principles. Be ready to show how your
experience and values overlap with these. While you do not have to memorize the leadership
principles, please study them and be prepared to explain how you have embodied these
principles in your own experiences. You will want to tell stories from your experiences which
speak to these, and utilize the STAR Method (document attached).
 Prepare yourself to go deep into the details about your previous projects/work (“I” is better
than “we”; focus on what you owned and worked on rather than your team).
 It is ok to have notes on hand for reference, bullet points or metrics, however, avoid reading
from a script.
 Ask follow up or clarifying questions before diving into a response, if needed.
 Be thoughtful in your response and ensure the example you share answers the question
asked. Pause to collect your thoughts, “that’s a great question, a few examples come to mind,
give me a minute to think of the best one”
 Avoid using the same examples throughout your interviews; it is important that we see the
breadth of your work and results.
 Amazon gives employees autonomy. Provide examples of areas where you have taken
initiative without another person’s direction or input.
 Amazon values candidates who are self-aware (or vocally self-critical) of their failures. Do not
be afraid to talk about your mistakes and how you’ve learned from them. We want to know
what actions you took to ensure your mistakes will not happen again.
 Amazon is a very data-driven company. We make decisions with data whenever possible. Each
of your examples should include the data you used in your decision making and the results
from using it.
 Be ready to discuss the Amazon products and/or technologies that excite you. While we do
not expect you to know every detail about the team you are interviewing with, you should
research the team and product enough to be able to have a thorough conversation with the
interviewers on those topics.
 As a reminder, you will have time at the end of your interview to ask questions. Please be
prepared with thoughtful questions to ask the interviewer.

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The best way to outline your examples is by using the STAR approach.

SITUATION – What was the situation or problem you were trying to solve?
TASK – What was the task?
ACTION – What was your contribution to that task?
RESULT – What was the outcome of that task? Were you able to succeed and deliver? Were you
unable to deliver? What were the findings? How would you implement differently to make it
successful?

 Here’s an example of answering a Deliver Results behavioral question using the STAR Method:
o Q: Tell me about a time when you delivered an important project under a tight
deadline. What sacrifices did you have to make to meet the deadline? How did they
impact the final deliverable? What was the final outcome?
o Situation: My team was under pressure to deliver a project in 6 months
o Task: Our initial technical estimations pointed out we needed three extra months to
finish everything, so we decided we needed to cut things off, prioritize the critical
paths or find ways to simplify the project.
o Action: Given the features we had to implement couldn’t be reduced in numbers, I did
two things:
 I saw testing would take us more time, so I started seeing the feature
prioritization and built a test plan for the project accordingly. Once I had it, I
marked what tests we could postpone because they were repeated or checked
at other levels (e.g. usability testing, because we were going to run end-to-end
tests) or UI automation for certain features, as we were going to implement JS
unit test cases. I also suggested reducing accessibility tests, running just a
subset of it for the first release, then the rest later.
 Whenever we had to implement a feature, I encouraged my team mates to
think if we could reuse existing code or systems to simplify the
implementation, and reduce time. For example, I remember we had to add a
feature where customers can buy products in a physical store that are out of
stock: they will pay for the items at the store and have them sent to their
house. I realized we already had a feature that allowed customers to buy
products in the physical store with coupons, and we were later sending them
products. This flow fit nicely with that feature and we only had to implement a
mechanism for customers to “buy the coupons” in the background, when they
come to the cashier. This simplified development by several weeks.
o Result: I checked both proposals with the project owner and acted as bridge between
them and my team to share our progress and obstacles every week. We were able to
deliver with only a one-week delay vs. the estimated 12 weeks without affecting the
quality if the feature we delivered. We ran the remaining tests and automation in
another release.

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 What makes this a strong “Deliver Results” example?

In this example, the candidate shows the following strength behaviors:

 Even though they saw the deadline was too tight, they tried to find ways of delivering the
project on time with the right quality (focused on simplifying and removing already covered
items).
 They communicated and agreed to all simplifications with the project owner.
 They decided to act as the bridge with the project owner and share the status of the project.

FINAL NOTE – Your interviewers will be looking for data points on our leadership principles in
your answers. Customer Obsession should be a consistent theme throughout your interview, the
WHY behind your actions. Make sure to provide lots of specific details in your stories, and not to
give high level/general overview answers. The interviewer wants to see that you are data/metric
driven, dive deep and deliver holistic answers. When talking about an issue or business need that
you identified – how did you identify that issue/need? What data did you collect? What actions
did you take? How did you measure the success of those actions? What was the long-term result?

Bias for Action

Speed matters in business. Many decisions and actions are reversible and do not need extensive study.
We value calculated risk taking.

 Give me an example of a calculated risk that you have taken where speed was critical. What
was the situation and how did you handle it? What steps did you take to mitigate the
risk? What was the outcome? Knowing what you know now, would you have done anything
differently?
 Tell me about a time when you worked against tight deadlines and didn't have time to
consider all options before making a decision. How much time did you have? What approach
did you take? What did you learn from the situation?
 Describe a situation where you made an important business decision without consulting your
manager. What was the situation and how did it turn out? Would you have done anything
differently?

Earn Trust

Leaders listen attentively, speak candidly, and treat others respectfully. They are vocally self-critical,
even when doing so is awkward or embarrassing. Leaders do not believe their or their team’s body
odor smells of perfume. They benchmark themselves and their teams against the best.

 Give me an example of a tough or critical piece of feedback you received. What was it and
what did you do about it?
 Describe a time when you needed to influence a peer who had a differing opinion about a
shared goal. What did you do? What was the outcome?

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  Tell me about a time when you had to communicate a change in direction that you
anticipated people would have concerns with. What did you do to understand the concerns
and mitigate them? Were there any changes you made along the way after hearing these
concerns? How did you handle questions and/or resistance? Were you able to get people
comfortable with the change?
 Give me an example of a time when you were not able to meet a commitment. What was the
commitment and what were the obstacles that prevented success? What was the impact to
your customers/peers and what did you learn from it?

Dive Deep

Leaders operate at all levels, stay connected to the details, audit frequently, and are skeptical when
metrics and anecdote differ. No task is beneath them.

 Tell me about a time when you were trying to understand a complex problem on your team
and you had to dig into the details to figure it out. Who did you talk with or where did you
have to look to find the most valuable information? How did you use that information to help
solve the problem?
 Tell me about a specific metric you have used to identify a need for a change in your
department. Did you create the metric or was it already available? How did this and other
information influence the change? What was the outcome of this change?

Invent & Simplify

Leaders expect and require innovation and invention from their teams and always find ways to
simplify. They are externally aware, look for new ideas from everywhere, and are not limited by “not
invented here." As we do new things, we accept that we may be misunderstood for long periods of
time.

 Give me an example of a complex problem you solved with a simple solution. What made the
problem complex? How do you know your solution addressed the problem?
 Describe the most innovative thing you’ve done and why you thought it was innovative. Ask
for one or two more examples to see if it's a pattern of innovative thinking. What was the
problem it was solving? What was innovative about it?
 Tell me about a time when you were able to make something simpler for customers. What
drove you to implement this change? What was the impact?
 Describe a time when you influenced and drove new thinking and innovation out of your
team. Give an example of how your approach led to a specific innovation.

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Customer Obsession

Leaders start with the customer and work backwards. They work vigorously to earn and keep
customer trust. Although leaders pay attention to competitors, they obsess over customers.

 Describe a difficult interaction you had with a customer. How did you deal with it? What was
the outcome? How would you handle it differently?
 Tell me about a time when you went above and beyond for a customer. Why did you do it?
How did the customer respond? What was the outcome?
 Give me an example of when you were able to anticipate a customer need with a
solution/product they didn't know they needed/wanted yet. How did you know they needed
this? How did they respond?

Ownership

Leaders are owners. They think long term and don’t sacrifice long-term value for short-term results.
They act on behalf of the entire company, beyond just their own team. They never say “that’s not my
job."

 Tell me about a time when you took on something significant outside your area of
responsibility. Why was it important? What was the outcome?
 Describe a time when you didn't think you were going to meet a commitment you promised.
How did you identify the risk and communicate it to stakeholders? Is there anything you
would do differently?
 Give me an example of an initiative you undertook because you saw that it could benefit the
whole company or your customers, but wasn’t within any group’s individual responsibility so
nothing was being done.

Learn and Be Curious

Leaders are never done learning and always seek to improve themselves. They are curious about new
possibilities and act to explore them.

 Tell me about a time when you realized you needed a deeper level of subject matter expertise
to do your job well. What did you do about it? What was the outcome? Is there anything you
would have done differently?
 Describe a time when you took on work outside of your comfort area. How did you identify
what you needed to learn to be successful? How did you go about building expertise to meet
your goal? Did you meet your goal?

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Deliver Results

Leaders focus on the key inputs for their business and deliver them with the right quality and in a
timely fashion. Despite setbacks, they rise to the occasion and never settle.

 Give me an example of a time when you were able to deliver an important project under a
tight deadline. What sacrifices did you have to make to meet the deadline? How did they
impact the final deliverable? What was the final outcome?
 Tell me about a time when you not only met a goal but considerably exceeded expectations.
How were you able to do it? What challenges did you have to overcome?
 Give me an example of a mission or goal you didn’t think was achievable. What was it and
how did you help your team try to achieve it? Were you successful in the end? Looking back,
would you have done anything differently?

Insist on the Highest Standards

Leaders have relentlessly high standards — many people may think these standards are unreasonably
high. Leaders are continually raising the bar and drive their teams to deliver high quality products,
services, and processes. Leaders ensure that defects do not get sent down the line and that problems
are fixed so they stay fixed.

 Describe a time when you refused to compromise your standards around quality/customer
service, etc. Who was your customer? What was the result?
 Tell me about a time when you were unsatisfied with the status quo. What did you do to
change it? What was the impact? Would you do anything differently in the future?
 Tell me about a time when you had to make a decision between standards and delivery. What
tradeoffs did you have make? What was the outcome? Knowing what you know now, would
you have done anything differently?

Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit

Leaders are obligated to respectfully challenge decisions when they disagree, even when doing so is
uncomfortable or exhausting. Leaders have conviction and are tenacious. They do not compromise for
the sake of social cohesion. Once a decision is determined, they commit wholly.

 Tell me about a time when you strongly disagreed with your manager or peer on something
you considered very important to the business. What was it and how did you handle it?
Knowing what you know now, would you do anything differently?
 Describe a time when you took an unpopular stance in a meeting with peers and your leader.
What was it? Why did you feel strongly about it? What did you do? What was the outcome?
 Often, we must make decisions as a group. Give me an example of a time you committed to a
group decision even though you disagreed. What factors led you to commit to the decision?
Would you make the same decision now?

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  Describe a time when you felt really strongly about something on a project but the team
decided to go in a different direction. How hard did you press the issue? How did you
approach that project afterward?

Think Big

Thinking small is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Leaders create and communicate a bold direction that
inspires results. They think differently and look around corners for ways to serve customers.

 Tell me about time when you were working on an initiative or goal and saw an opportunity to
do something much bigger or better than the initial focus. Did you take that opportunity?
Why or why not? What was the outcome?
 Give me an example of how you have changed the direction or view of a specific
function/department and helped them embrace a new way of thinking. Why was a change
needed? What was the outcome?
 Tell me about a time when you drove adoption for your vision/ideas. How did you know your
vision/idea was adopted by others? How did you drive adoption for your vision/ideas? How
did you track adoption? Would you do anything differently?
 Tell me about a time when you thought differently to improve a process that was working.
What assumptions did you have to question? How did you evaluate if the change improved
the process? Knowing what you know now, would you do anything differently?

Are Right, A Lot

Leaders are right a lot. They have strong judgment and good instincts. They seek diverse perspectives
and work to disconfirm their beliefs.

 Tell me about a time when you didn't have enough data to make the right decision. What did
you do? What path did you take? Did the decision turn out to be the correct one?
 Tell me about a strategic decision you had to make without clear data or benchmarks. How
did you make your final decision? What alternatives did you consider? What were the
tradeoffs of each? How did you mitigate risk?
 Tell me about a time when you made a difficult decision with input from many different
sources (customers, stakeholders, partner teams, etc.). What was the situation and how did
you arrive at your decision? Did the decision turn out to be the correct one? Why or why not?
 Tell me about a time when you discovered that your idea was not the best course of action.
What was your idea? Why wasn't your idea the best course of action? How did you find out it
was not the correct path? What was the best course of action? Who provided it? What did you
learn from the experience?