I was contacted by an Amazon recruiter the same day that I submitted my resume to the Amazon careers site. The recruiter asked for my design portfolio, which he forwarded to the hiring manager. One week later, I had my first phone interview with a member of the UX team for Kindle. This individual was currently a senior UX designer, so he would have been a potential team mate. He seemed very knowledgeable and asked excellent questions, several of which I answered by taking him through design examples from my portfolio. I asked him many questions in turn, including the turnover rate among UX designers and his current likes/dislikes at Amazon. The following week I had my second phone interview with the hiring manager for the UX team. He indicated that although they were looking for a senior UX designer, there might be potential for a team lead position because I had management experience as a team lead. The hiring manager's questions were not as specific as the senior UX designer's, but he seemed more focused on overall culture fit than job experience. The majority of his questions were focused on how I handled situation X or situation Y, as well as the qualities I try to identify while interviewing designers at my current organization. He did not have access to my portfolio due to email issues and was late calling me for the phone interview. The following week, I was invited to interview the Amazon offices at the new South Lake Union offices. The actual job interview was about 5 weeks after the initial phone call from the technical recruiters. They flew me into Seattle the day before the interview, put me up at a nice hotel, and covered daily expenses. I took a taxi to the South Lake Union offices (the entire area is still under construction) and met with a senior recruiter in one of the conference rooms, who explained who I was going to meet with and the general structure of the day. This recruiter also said that the team's hiring decision would be available the following week. I then walked over to the Amazon cafeteria (Garage Cafe) with the development lead of the software team who built what the UX team designed. He was a nice guy, and we spent most of the lunch hour discussing how UX designers work with developers in different ways (Agile, design and development gates, tactical vs. strategic). After lunch, I walked through my UX design portfolio with 5-6 folks from the UX design team and answered questions about approach and deliverables. After the portfolio review, I had series of 1:1 interviews - 3 with members of the UX design team and 1 with a director of an affiliated business unit. He was definitely the bar raiser interview. His questions were very straightforward, but I'm not necessarily certain we connected. The best 1:1 interview with was the sr. user experience designer who had initially interviewed me via phone. After discussing how I approach the different aspects of UX design, he posed a couple of design questions, which I tried to address via whiteboarding. We ran short of time, so I ended up spending 10 minutes on one exercise and 12 minutes on another. Despite my messy handwriting, he took photos of my whiteboard notes and sketches. At the end of the day, I met with the manager of the UX team again. He asked me a couple more questions, asked what I talked about with the other team members, and then asked more culture-fit questions. He seemed especially curious if I would feel comfortable working on a single product line versus the handful that I currently juggle. (The implication was clearly a concern that I might get restless.) Overall, the interview was a good experience. I did notice that Amazonians in the new offices seemed busy, tired, and generally very focused - but this matches other corporate cultures I've been exposed to. The new South Lake Union offices were very new and spacious - at least for the team I visited. (Apparently this is a contrast to the older Amazon offices further south in Seattle.) The following week, I received a call from the recruiter saying that they had decided not to make me an offer. Amazon has a policy of not offering feedback, but she said that it had been a difficult choice for the team. I suspect I might have been too senior for the role since I have more than 10 years of experience. Or it might have been a culture-fit issue since my background is not primarily focused on consumer products. In any case, it was a good experience. As a UX designer, the best part of the interview process was being able to give direct feedback to the product team about a product that I use frequently and like a great deal!

I submitted my application through Amazon Jobs for a Senior User Experience role. About a week later, I got an email from a recruiter asking to schedule a phone call. During the call, we talked about the role, my background, and my interest in Amazon. She explained the interview process, which would include an online assessment and four virtual interviews focusing on coding, system design, and behavioral questions based on Amazon’s Leadership Principles.