Amazon Business Analyst

After your resume gets shortlisted, you will be called for a phone screen. The phone screen is a 1-hour interview with the recruiter. This interview call is aimed at assessing your cultural and experiential fit for the role at the company. The interviewer is likely to pose questions regarding your background and previous work experience in the relevant domain, and may also discuss previous projects you have handled. Be thoroughly prepared with your CV. Keep a crisp and convincing answer ready for questions such as "why do you think you are best for the role?" or "why should we hire you?" 

The onsite round is a full-day interview consisting of 4-5 rounds. Usually, there are two technical rounds and 2-3 behavioural rounds. There may also be a bar raiser round in the onsite round. Each of these interview scores is going to be counted to assess your overall performance  (except the bar raiser). A bar raiser is an interviewer from a different business unit. The interviewer of the bar raiser round will be a more senior executive than the level you are applying for and holds the final call regarding your selection. Bar raisers make sure that candidates who get selected are better than at least 50% of the current employees of the company.

Technical Rounds

The technical rounds consist of questions from topics such as database management, data engineering concepts, and a few simple coding questions. Database management questions will mostly be from SQL. Data Engineering concepts such as ETL pipeline may be asked.

The interviewer will also most likely ask some questions on statistical analysis, mathematical logic, business case questions, and product insight and strategy. Also, expect some questions that may be in the form of a short business case study.

There may also be questions that require you to think of new metrics to be applied to business processes and evaluate their outcomes. The one common thread across all the various question-types will be the application of sound logical thinking and analytical decision-making.

Behavioural Rounds

The other 2-3 rounds will be behavioural interviews. Here, the interviewer will ask you situational questions that require you to apply Amazon's 14 Leadership Principles. Therefore, you must learn and understand these principles. For each leadership principle, you must be ready to share an experience where you applied that principle.

As a tip for the Behavioural round, remember the STAR method. The STAR method is a simple framework to answer situational questions based on your work experience.

Situation: State the context of the problem.

Task: What your role in the situation/problem was.

Action: Steps taken by you to resolve the situation

Result: The outcome of your efforts to resolve the situation.

• Practice a lot of MySql and ETL questions, since a good number of questions from these areas are asked in the technical rounds.
• Be thorough with Amazon's 14 leadership principles. Use them when the interviewers ask you behavioural questions.

Most asked interview questions in the Onsite Round

Technical Rounds

SQL:

• How familiar are you with SQL queries?
• What are two diagrams you have used as a business analyst?
• Tell me the different types of subqueries and how you use them.
• How would you find the third-highest salary in an employee table using self-join?
• Can you write a SQL on sales fact table and product dimension to reporting products with the highest revenue in each product group.

Data Engineering Concepts:

• What tools do you use for data analysis? Have you heard of Tableau? Where have you used it?
• How do you deal with multi-source problems?

ETL: 

• Can you tell me the difference between merge and union all transformations?
• Explain the term clustered index.
• What is the difference between a star schema and a snowflake schema?

Statistical Analysis & Mathematical Logic

• How are mean, median, and mode in a positively skewed distribution-related?
• What are the absolute measures of dispersion?

How many smaller cubes are completely invisible in a n*n*n Rubik's cube?

Use Case 

• Suppose you have to recommend a product to a customer who has already filled his cart, then what data will you look for? In other words, how will you recommend a product to an e-commerce customer who has his cart full?
• How do you deal with customers' frequently changing requirements while working on a system?

Behavioural Interview Rounds

• What is the toughest decision you faced and how did you overcome it?
• Tell us about a time when you disagreed with the entire team and why?
• How did you manage when a project deadline was missed?
• Share with us an experience when you faced a challenge where the best way forward was not clear cut. How did you go about handling the challenge then?
• Have you ever tried and failed at something? Tell me more about it.
• Tell us an example of a time when you showed initiative.
• Have you ever motivated others? How was the experience?
• Can you tell me about a time when a project you delegated turned out to be a grand success?
• Tell me about a time when you mentored someone.