Amazon Interview Process

I applied for the position of Software Developer from my university and the process took two days. If you are applying via other sources, the time may vary. Anyways, finally I was interviewed at Amazon. There are five rounds in total at Amazon - online test, 3 Technical Interview rounds, and HR Interview.

Round 1 - Online Test
In this online test all you will be asked is problems regarding coding. If you know the basics, the round might not be that hard to crack as it is basically acting as a barrier for non-serious candidates.

Round 2 - First Technical Interview Round
Online test was not the only elimination round as it happens at each interview. This first technical interview was not difficult. You will be asked questions based on OS and algorithms majorly. Again, if your concepts are clear, you will crack the round.

Round 3 - Second Technical Interview Round
Expect the difficulty level to rise from here. Again, the algorithm problems were asked and thus you must be prepared thoroughly with them. Also some questions on data structures and networking were asked. One of the question I remember is:
Q. Find median from a stream of flowing numbers.

Round 4 - Third Technical Interview Round
This was the toughest interview round. I was eliminated in this round and could not move to the HR round. I was surprised when they asked me a question regarding parallel computing. I guess their sole motive was to put me under pressure and they managed successfully. Some technical questions I remember:
Q1. Given a string, write a function that prints all the subsets of the string. After that, make the function to return only unique solutions.
Q2. What is the tracking algorithm of the nearest location to some friends that are located in a grid region?

Round 5 - HR Interview
Unfortunately I was not able to get myself to this round and so I can't tell much in detail. Mostly they will be asking about your previous experience if any or the projects that you might have done in your college time. Negotiations can be made here.

How to crack ( Get Into) Amazon Interview

It is really tough to wind up such a big topic briefly. So all I will ask you is to prepare your basics and concepts strongly. If your base is strong you can pull off the interview. Even I managed to get through two technical rounds.

The online test as I said is simple and easy to crack. Thus if you were serious, you will at least get to face people from Amazon. But you need to relax, the people over there are nice. I would like to share my case. In my second technical interview round, I was stuck in a question but I was approaching the right path. So they even encouraged me and helped me reach for the final solution. Thus if you know a bit, don't sit quiet, speak it up.

Focus on the algorithms as the questions were majorly concentrated on that. Questions based on algorithms were asked in all the three technical interviews and thus carry much of importance.

Finally, I would wish luck to all the candidates. Prepare hard and you will definitely crack the Amazon Interview.