CodePath EES2024 AMAZON - Tech Interview Success: Best Practices Unlocked

Hey everyone. For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Josie and I’m the support career support coordinator for the career center at CodePath. How many of you need to take technical interviews in your future?

Give me a thumbs up. Yeah, I think a lot of you. Well, welcome to today’s breakout session on tech interview mastery best practices unlocked hosted by Darius Robinson.

We are so excited to have him join us today from AWS. I will be introducing our speaker shortly, but first wanted to share a few reminders. Please utilize the chat to have conversations and share your thoughts during the session.

Please keep your messages relevant to the topic of the session and note that the presenters and speakers can see the chat and questions may be answered live during the session. Following the session, we ask that you complete the brief feedback survey. Your feedback is very important to us.

With the reminders out of the way, I’d like to introduce our tech interview extraordinaire from AWS, Darius Robinson, to the stage. Good afternoon. Good afternoon.

Can Can you hear me just fine? We can hear you. All right, perfect.

Hello everyone. My name is Darius Robinson. I am a senior technical recruiter.

I have been with AWS for five and a half years. But it’s still day one. I look forward to teaching everyone on this call how to be more successful through your technical interview process with AWS and hopefully with some other companies.

U for today’s objectives, we’re going to first start to look at how to do the research and make sure you understand what to expect through the interview process. Then we’ll dive into the STAR method, which I’m sure everyone has heard of. So in the chat box what does STAR stand for?

Someone can tell me in the chat box. Then we’ll also look at technical interview prep. When you think about the actual final interview which might be virtual and also preparing for the coding interviews.

So let’s get started. All right. So the star method let me check the chat box here.

Who was who got the answer correct? There are a lot of messages because that means okay thanks manual sent you action task action result. So everyone is familiar with the concept.

You know the STAR method and I’ll tell you why the STAR method is important. The STAR method is important because it helps the interviewer understand that you can clearly articulate a problem that you solved. When you are working your internship or in corporate America, you’re going to be tasked with similar situations.

Whereas, if you’re working on a problem or you’re trying to build some type of a software, you want to be able to clearly articulate how well that problem can be solved by using a similar version of the STAR method. So, just so you are aware, the interviewer is not only going to ask you about situations where you were successful, but also situations where you failed. So as you start thinking about creating your examples, definitely think of opportunities where you failed but you found a way to succeed.

So let’s go through an example. I’ll just let you read through this very quickly. Tell me about a time when you were trying to solve a complex problem and had to dig into the details to figure it out.

So I’ll let everyone take a minute to read through this. Very simple as you can see. Raise your hand if you think the the the candidate used the star method in this example or give me a thumbs up if you think the candidate used the star method in the example in the chat box.

Okay, thumbs up. Thumbs up. Thumbs up.

Wow, lots of thumbs up. Okay, give me a thumbs up if you think this is a great example of using the star method. Another thumbs up.

Okay, Katrina. Okay, so we still seeing thumbs up. Ah, so all right, not a lot of thumbs down, but I see in the in the com in the comments there was no results.

So good call out here. So let’s go into take a look into it. Right?

They talked about why, they talked about who, and they talked about and then, but they really didn’t go into detail around the result, like what actually happened. So, let’s take a second look and thanks for the feedback in the chat box. Same question, different answer.

So, I’ll let everyone have a moment to read through this. All right. Oh, yeah.

Okay. So when you take a a look at this example, you can see they talked about what they did. They talked about why they worked on it.

They gave actionable information and then they talked about the result. What was the actual impact? So I think this is a great example for everyone on this call because you think about the projects you’re working on at school and so crafting these types of examples are going to be very important.

One thing that’s not mentioned here is interviewers want to understand how did you go above and beyond to solve a problem or work on a project. So, just just in reading through this, like in the chat box, what is something that you think, you would have done in this same situation to go above and beyond to maybe add a little more, detail to the result. Personal impact.

Okay. No technologies used. Okay.

Reflection. Okay. I think one thing that you know as I read through the example and as I was creating this, I would have said that we actually put this this automated autonomous lawnmower into some type of a competition with like Caterpillar and won first place.

That’s where you can show like how you were going above and beyond. Like not only did you work on a project at school, but you saw this as an opportunity to see if you can take this same product and put it into competition. So think about that as you are creating your examples like how have you gone above and beyond to solve problems or taking a small project that you’ve worked on and taking it to the next level.

Perform research. It’s a good answer. I like that.

All right, technical interview best practices. I know this is everyone’s favorite part. So, let’s get into it.

The the first thing I recommend for everyone on this call is pick a list of five companies that you would really like to work for, right? And I would say from that list, pick companies at different levels. So let’s say AWS is your top company, right?

Like I would say maybe pick three or four fang companies that you would really like to work for and three to five mid-tier companies you would like to work for. So a mid tier might be a company like Capital One, it could be IBM, it could be what’s another mid tier company? Someone in the chat box helped me.

Oh, Walmart. Walmart tech. That’s a great one.

Now, you will have to move to Britainville, but that’s neither here nor there. And Visa is another great company. And with these, we’ll call it eight companies, four fame companies, four mid tier, go and figure out what is the interview process.

What is the technical interview process for that company? So, most fame companies or main companies, we start you off with the online assessment. I know for the internships with AWS, now don’t quote me on this.

The last time I checked, you do like a two or three rounds of coding interviews. I’m not sure if it’s the same at Microsoft or Meta or Google. So, make sure you understand what are the requirements for those those companies.

The mid-tier companies might have a totally different process. You might be spending a lot of time on leak code preparing for the main interviews and you might learn that the second tier companies their interviews aren’t as strenuous and don’t require as much prep. And then just making sure you’re following the right learning style and you’re working with other folks especially in CodePath to to help you through this journey.

So that’s kind of what we’re talking about at first. Be prepared for the interviews before you take them on. Also when you land the the phone screen, if if you’re having a a phone screen with a recruiter or hiring manager, be ready to talk through the details on your resume.

Another thing, you know, whatever coding languages you are proficient in, make sure you add those on your resume. If you are not proficient in a coding language, I would suggest not adding it to the resume because you might be asked about it. If you worked on any side projects or you’ve had any previous internships, make sure you document that information in your resume so that you can have an opportunity to speak through it.

Outside of your resume, your LinkedIn is another place where if you’ve worked on over 15 projects or you’ve had several internships, you always want to link that information to your LinkedIn so that the interviewer or the company can dive deeper into your background. Okay. How would you define proficient?

Great question. I would say I would define it as if you have we so we have Java, Golang, C++, Python, Cotlin, right? Out of those five, which of them are you most proficient?

And you can like put them in order. So whichever one you are most proficient in, make that first into the one that you are least proficient. If you’ve never been exposed to a coding language, like you haven’t used it at all, but you maybe had a class, like I wouldn’t suggest adding that because you might be asked about it in the interview, time management.

So, this is a good good segue and this is why it’s important to practice before your interviews. So in our interviews you have about the technical phone screen or the final interview would be 60 minutes broken into two parts. You would have about 30 minutes to work through the coding portion and then that would leave about well 30 to 40 minutes to work through the the coding portion and then that would leave about 20 minutes to go through the behavioral portion.

So when you are practicing or doing your mock interviews, practice with this flow. You want to always make sure you start by asking clarifying questions, making sure you understand the problem, then talking through a potential solution, and then leaving 15 to 20 minutes to code, but also just leaving a couple minutes to, you know, go through test cases and considering other situations. One thing to note, not on this PowerPoint, but what I would like everyone to take from this call is if you are not talking during your interview, that is not a good time.

If you are normally if you’re, you know, working through coding problems on your own, you’re not thinking out loud, start practicing doing mock interviews where you practice thinking out loud and actually talking through the solution. One thing you have to think about as the interviewer, you have to think of them as your coworker, right? So, if I look at you as a potential coworker and I give you a problem and all you do is go out and solve it, that’s not a good sign that you can work very closely with me, right?

We want to see that you can think out loud and produce the code. So, making sure that you start practicing for those actual interviews when you’re actually interacting with another with with the interviewer because those are things that they watch out for during the interview. Now, I can’t say that’s the same for all other companies, but I can say from my experiences and reading interview feedback that this is something that is consistent where if candidates are not speaking through the interview, that’s not a good sign.

So, just make sure you’re practicing with the mock interviews. And I’m doing my best to see the questions, but a lot of coming in. So, I’ll do my best to to read as they come in.

What if I get stuck? How do you effectively deal with it even when you’re asked? No. That’s important.

It’s okay to get stuck. One thing that you you you should know that the interviewer actually wants you to be successful during the interview. So being stuck is okay.

So for example, let’s say you’re coding something out and you are trying to figure out let’s say you wanted to use a binary tree, right? But you get stuck as you’re starting to build it. So you could ask the interviewer, hey, I’m thinking about using a binary tree.

I’m thinking about doing this. I’m not quite sure this is the right direction and let them give you feedback versus you’re doing the interview and you’re not sure and you just guess. So, I’m not sure.

Should I use like a binary tree or should I use a hash or should I use two pointer? I really just don’t know. That’s not a good sign.

What the interviewer is trying to understand is your train of thought. Do are you thinking about the problem in the right way and are you going in the right direction? And if you are going in the right direction, they will give you hints to help steer you along the path.

Which once again, why it’s important for you to think out loud so that the interviewer will know which way you’re going. All right. So the problem solving approach.

So this goes into a little more detail around how to actually execute the interview. So when you first are presented with a question, right, you want to make sure you ask clarifying questions so that you understand. You want to make sure that you ask enough questions to come up with some type of a solution.

And brute force is sometimes okay. Don’t don’t be afraid to use brute force. But you want to make sure that you first understand by asking those questions and then provide a potential solution to the interviewer before you start coaching communication.

So, you know, we’ve already talked about this three or four times already, so now we’re on the slide. Ask lots of clarifying questions because even if you know the answer to the question and you’re not able to justify why you made that decision, it still can have an impact on your interview result. So I know a lot of you are maybe spending a lot of time on link code or HackerRank and you might be exposed to a question that you might have solved during the interview or something similar.

But this is where the communication is key because you want to be able to communicate how you came to these solutions. Why are you using this part this particular data structure or this particular algorithm? So looking back to the behavioral portion, right?

Be sure to explain what you did. Give reasons why and how the impact was made. Be prepared for the follow-up questions.

And I’m want to spend a little time on this like you know, we talk a lot about creating STAR examples, but and I I experienced this myself when I was interviewing is being prepared for the follow-up questions. So when you are thinking about a project or a problem that you’ve solved, you want to also think about okay where are the gaps? What might the interviewer ask me more questions about?

So I’ll actually jump back to that slide where we had the example because I think this is a great segue. Okay. So, to everyone on the call, like what is a potential follow-up question you might ask if this was your candidate after reading this example in the chat box?

Anyone Okay. What chip did you use and why? That’s a great one.

What tools did you use? Okay. One question I might ask or so they talked about the safety requirements of the project.

Like I might want to better understand what were the safety requirements because they don’t really talk about this in the situation. So that’s a question I might ask. Any others use cases?

Okay. What was the biggest problem you faced? Okay.

Why lawnmower? Great question. Did you consider cost?

Okay, that’s a good one. I like the the product de development coming in here. How did you test?

Okay. Right. So, you know, as we can see, we’re already coming up with potential questions that might be asked during the interview.

So for yourselves, if you are in the process of getting ready to interview, do the same exercise with a couple of your friends or do it do it on do it, you know, alone and then ask some friends like, "Hey, Poke Co and in my example, like what are some things you might ask me?" Because that is the part of the interview that I think most people don’t prepare for. They think that they have this like bar raising idea and that it’s the best thing that ever happened. But you know maybe it’s not to the interviewer.

So you know starting to ask other people for feedback is important so that you can know how to better prepare for that part of the interview. Okay. So another thing is to add metrics.

Right. In that example we didn’t see a lot of metrics. We didn’t see a lot of data.

As a as a recruiter, as I’m working with my candidates, preparing for their interviews, I’m always looking for numbers. Like, as I just skim through the example, I’m looking for numbers because that’s a clear sign that you’re really justifying how you came to this conclusion. So, another key takeaway would be if you’re looking at your examples and you don’t see numbers like at least four, I would say closer to five or six, you might want to add some more data points because the more numbers and metrics you can add to your example actually helps tell the story in more detail.

So technical takeaways I would say practice, practice and practice. You know and I’ll just speak more to interviewing at AWS. You know there are particular data structures and algorithms that you really want to become very familiar with before engaging with the interview.

What I’ve learned and speaking with other candidates and engineers that have been hired with the company is they like to start by learning a particular data structure or algorithm, doing the research, watching a couple YouTube videos, and then going to practice like on LeetCode or HackerRank to make sure they fully understand the data structure algorithm. And as they start to learn more, they they pull them all together. So you see here I talk about about easy and and medium questions.

This goes back to the technical interview, right? So you’re going to have about an hour to go through that interview. Your question that you will be faced with will either be a a easy level or medium level question.

So what you want to get to is you want to be at a point where no matter what easy question you come across on lead coder HackerRank, you can easily solve it in under 20 minutes or 30 minutes. This also goes into the the coding assessment because you’re only going to have about 90 minutes to complete those questions. So if you’re going to have two questions, you you want to make sure you have time because what if the easy question is difficult?

You want to make sure you have enough time to answer both of the questions. So, continue to practice, but I I want to make this clear to everyone on the call. You want to make sure you have a clear understanding of the data structures and algorithms.

You also want to make sure that you can consistently solve a easy or medium question in this time frame. What this does not mean is go on LeetCode and just sol solve questions until you can get your easy consistency down to 20 minutes. What this means is if it takes you 45 minutes to complete a medium question, go understand why you were not successful on that medium question.

Go watch more YouTube videos. Go do more research. Make sure you understand it.

And then go back and solve another medium question. When you go over the time, that is a sign to go practice more understanding where you failed so that you can build up the tolerance to make sure you understand. Okay, thanks Ram.

All right, so here are some resources I would recommend checking out. Does big old come up? Yes, it does.

William, here’s just some resources and I’ll make sure I get this over to the team the PowerPoint so that it could be shared with everyone. HackerRank is the the tool that Amazon uses for the online assessment. So, if you are using HackerRank, that’s great.

It’s not required. I know people who’ve used other platforms like LeetCode to prepare or I don’t know some there’s some others out there. So I don’t want you to think that you have to use HackerRank to prepare but it is the platform we use for the actual test.

Another thing that I would tell you is that companies are investing a lot in technology across all main companies because I have friends at all these companies. We’re we’re noticing that companies are starting to invest in technology that can actually monitor all of your activity on the screen. So we know with the emergence of generative AI and ChatGPT that there is more opportunity to find answers or find information on the internet.

So, I I just strongly suggest everyone on this call continue to practice on your own. Really making sure you understand this information so that when you are presented with an opportunity to interview for one of these roles you’re able to work out the problem come from this. Let’s go to this page.

All right. So, just for everyone on this call, I actually launched a program literally almost four years ago to this day called Bentech Interview Prep where we prepare candidates from underrepresented communities for Amazon technical interviews. So, these sessions are held every other Wednesday.

So, I recommend everyone on this call to give this a shot. I’m sure there’s someone on this call who’s actually attended a session before. If you have you could like raise your hand or say hello in the chat box.

But it’s a great way to just learn about how to prepare for the technical interview and then we have a engineer who actually goes over a coding question during the session. So okay so you have attended. Okay great.

So we have folks on the call who who who who’ve checked it out. Okay. Wow that’s a lot of people.

Wow. Okay great. That’s good sign.

Seems like it works. There’s another program, Brilliant Black Minds. They offer free mock interviews to black engineers.

So if anyone on this call is interested in this program, I strongly suggest it. I’ve worked with a couple candidates over the years and those mock interviews definitely provide a lot of value and insights. They also have opportunities where they can help you with landing interviews at other companies through their platform.

So if you haven’t tried out Brilliant Black Minds, I definitely recommend checking that one as well. Bend is a internal subset of the black black employee network. So if you become a member of Amazon or of the company, we would love to have you.

But we are an ERG. All right. Hope everyone had a chance to scan.

I’m going to the next slide. I will not be at Grace Harper this year as far as I know, but things change. Yes, this is open to Canadians.

We actually have people who join from Europe and we actually had someone join from Japan one time. So yeah, definitely if you outside of United States, you could join. Yes, if you’re not from an or underrepresented if if this program is open to all.

Anyone on this call is welcome to come to the the session. Okay. Brilliant black minds is separate but anyone on this call we are we’re inviting everyone on this call to attend the session.

So feel free to join. I’ll be looking out for the RSVPs and hopefully I’ll see you tomorrow. All right, let’s go to the next slide.

So, here’s a more detailed list of things to if you’re looking to prepare for Amazon technical interviews, here’s a list of the data structures and algorithms that you should prioritize. So, if you want to take a screenshot of this, I would say, hey, this is the this is the money what I would consider the money slide like these are the things you want to make sure you you understand. So in the chat box if you can type in your favorite data structure and algorithm on this list search BFS.

Okay. Okay. Awesome map.

Okay. Okay. Great.

Okay. Wow. Heap seems to be very popular.

Okay. Great. Well, I’ll jump to the next slide.

So, in a review, make sure you do your research. So, we talked about finding your top eight companies, your top four main companies, and your top four what we might consider second tier companies. Another thing that comes to mind, and I I just thought about this, but also doing your research and seeing what other nonprofit communities exist that help talent, you know, land interviews at tech companies.

So, I’m sure there are other foundations or maybe other your college has some type of initiative or partnership with with certain companies. So, I would actually say, you know, taking a look at your career services site at your school to see if they have any partnerships with these companies because they might have access outside of you just submitting an application to you know, expedit your your interview process. Another thing like please prepare before you start the interview.

Like if if if you don’t take anything else from this call and I’ve seen this firsthand like don’t submit the application or you know engage until you know you’re ready to take on that interview because what will happen is if you fail then you have to wait whether it’s six months or a year or you know maybe until after you graduate college who knows but make sure you do your due diligence to prepare for the interview before you start engag engaging in the interview process because what what what some maybe can do is let’s just say hey you’ve been banging it out on leak code you know you can pass the online assessment you get to the final interview you haven’t spent enough time preparing for the star examples and you still don’t land the internship so I don’t want everyone to think on this call it’s all about having you know preparing for the technical portion the behavioral portion is just as important and if you haven’t spent enough time preparing for that, continue to do so that so that you can be successful through both parts of the interview. Another thing, another thing you can do, is just doing the mock interviews. Like I’m sure you can go to your school’s career services website.

There’s another website that I can type in the chat box. It’s called pramp.com. You can do mock interviews with other folks who are preparing for interviews.

So, those are unlimited. I definitely recommend checking that out. You know, the easy and the medium.

So, I know it’s I said 20 on the other slide, but to optimize, I’d say, hey, you know what? Let’s get it closer to 15 and 25 just to be a little just to increase your chances of being successful. And the last thing is just communicating through the interview like it’s going to be very critical that you can on both sides right like during your technical interviews which is your interaction with the interviewer as you’re solving a coding problem that’s very critical we spend a lot of time talking about that but also the behavioral portion being able to clearly articulate a problem that you solved being being able to clearly answer follow-up questions as to why you solve this problem.

And it’s funny when you really start to think about it, right? The the behavioral interview and the coding interview are very similar because the only difference is that you’ve solved this problem before, right? Give me an example of a time you did something.

This isn’t this is a problem you solved. So, you should be able to technically be able to easily articulate how you solve that problem and and handle the the follow-up questions that come along with it. In a coding interview, it’s the opposite.

Maybe you haven’t been exposed to this problem. And they want to see how you can clearly articulate how you would solve the problem and come up with a solution and be able to explain tradeoffs and decisions that you’ve made. So, I think that I hope that helps everyone on this call to think a little more about how this behavioral thing works on both sides.

So that you can be more successful through the interview. Next. All right.

So, questions. I know there have been a lot of questions as I’ve started, so I think Josie will kick me off with the questions. I’m a comment.

You did a great job, Darius. I loved it. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. All right.

So, we’ve had a lot of interested in Amazon AWS. You’ve gotten a lot of questions. But the first question I’m going to ask you is about the opportunities that are available to internships and grads right now.

Yes. So, if you are interested in a position, I strongly recommend checking out Amazon.j jobs. We do have positions available for internships and for full-time.

I will say that it’s important that you take a different approach through first of all, make sure you’re prepared. I’m going to start there. Make sure you’re prepared.

Make sure you’re prepared. Once prepared, definitely if you haven’t already submitted an application, which is fine. Try to get someone to refer you.

Someone that you graduated from the same school, maybe someone that was in the same student organization. I’m sure there are plenty of folks from Cold Path who currently work at Amazon because it’s such a wonderful program. But get active on LinkedIn and try to find also software development managers or engineering leaders and just make connections and let them know, hey, you know, I’ve come through this program at Cold Path.

I’m really interested in interning at Amazon. I would love an opportunity to you know interview at the company because that’s how you’re going to get around this application process. There are literally over 10,000 people that I looked at one like two weeks ago.

There were like 10,000 applications in one in one requisition. That was in one requisition. So, if you’re really interested in landing a job here, get in contact with software development managers or software engineers who’ve maybe been at the company that can get your resume pulled and get you into the process.

There are also partnerships that maybe your school has connections within different parts of the company where they are looking to you know make sure people from your schools or from your organization land interviews making sure you’re in contact with those individuals as well. Awesome. And be prepared.

Be prepared. And be prepared. Yes.

Oh, and one other thing. Be prepared. I know this is going to sound crazy, but recruiters are gatekeepers.

Yes, you see my title as a senior technical recruiter. I actually recruit SD2s. So, if if if you’re looking for opportunities for me to help you land the an interview, I am not the person.

Recruiters unless you see on LinkedIn that they actually say that they are recruiting for interns, those are the people to go after. But when you really start to think about this, right, everyone is targeting the recruiter. Everyone wants to get in contact with the recruiter.

People don’t really think about reaching out to the software development managers or the software engineers because they get a lot less messages. That’s where you want to target, the people who actually make hiring decisions. So, if you don’t take anything else from this, start reaching out to managers and engineers.

They can help move your resume through the the application process. That’s a really, really great advice. All right, next question.

As a recruiter, what do you look for in a candidate aside from the content of his or her resume? I I’m I’m more of a LinkedIn person, right? I like to see, you know, what problems have you been solving, like you know, I also look at GitHub to see if you’re building things, involvement in student organizations.

I was actually a part of a fraternity while I was in college. So anytime I see someone that was a part of the MPHC, it’s something that I look for. Also just clarity in the resume, right?

Like how well can you articulate just on paper your experiences? I also look for ChatGPT. I can I can read a resume and tell whether or not it was computerenerated.

And so those are those are things that I’m looking out for. Like I I do understand that there there I don’t see anything wrong with using generative AI to help you build things but when it when it’s clear that this was generated those are things that we watch out for. So th those are the ones that come to mind for now.

All right. I have a question on everyone’s favorite recursion and dynamic programming. How would you recommend to learn an approach to these problems?

I I’m really not sure not the person for that. I would say Google and YouTube and chat GBT. Not I’m not a I don’t I don’t dabble in the the the technical interview prep.

Does someone maybe someone in the chat bridge has some help? I see something neat code is a good place. Yeah, but also reaching out to a software engineer at AWS on LinkedIn and talking to them about your question might be a good way to both network and get your question answered.

That is great feedback. I’m gonna actually let me write that down. All right, Darius.

If you’re not proficient in one of the programming languages, but you have a bit of experience, should you still add it to your resume? Yes. If you can talk to this experience or this language, add it to your resume.

If you don’t feel confident, then I wouldn’t say to add it. You know, at the end of the day, you know, you can think of your resume just like a a Instagram post, right? Someone’s going to look at it very quickly, see if they’ll see the right things, and either they’re going to set up a a phone interview or they they’ll go to the next resume.

So, what you really want to be prepared for is kind of going back to my example from earlier. What are they going to ask me about on this resume? And am I able to speak to this information very quickly and easily?

Because that that’s what, you know, can be the make or break for you. All right. I love this next question.

How do you approach evaluating candidates who may be strong technically but struggle with communication or explaining their thought process? Can you repeat that question? How do you approach evaluating candidates who may be strong technically but struggle with communication or explaining their thought processes?

H what I would suggest in that situation is you know first that the candidate you know does enough practice to build the confidence up because it’s not something that you can get around from even outside of the interview, right? Like when you’re working with your teammates, you want to be able to be able to communicate your thoughts in a way that others understand. Now all companies do have accommodations.

So, if you if you are interviewing at a company and you see this as a potential accommodation need, I would suggest reaching out to that recruiter to let them know, hey, this is something that I want you to be aware of as I’m going through the interview so that they have that information and maybe they can set you up with with some other interview to to make sure that you know we are giving you know that giving you that fair shot. All right, good answer. If you’re unable to completely finish the code for a technical question, can you still pass the interview?

Essentially, is communicating a solid understanding of the problem and a clear approach to solve a problem enough to pass in some cases you have. So, you know, I’ll just speak to like the SD2 interview process because I’m that’s what I, you know, do dayto-day. There are four rounds of interviews, four technical and we go over eight leadership principles.

During our debrief, we are assessing based on your technical rounds and the interview the the the examples you provided around our leadership principles. Do you raise the bar at the level? So to answer your question, just because you don’t do well in one technical interview does not mean you won’t get the job.

One thing I will tell you is everyone on this call is if you have a if you consistently provide bar raising examples around our leadership principles, you will drastically increase the chances of landing the job. That’s a good nugget. Everybody should write that one down.

All right. When accepting a job offer and given a choice between two tracks you are equally passionate about, for example, cyber security and software engineering, how do you decide on which track to pursue? Could you ask that question one more time?

When accepting a job offer and given a choice between two tracks you are equally passionate about, for example, cyber security and software engineering, how do you decide on which track to pursue? I would say see if there’s an opportunity to work on a team that’s a sophomore engineering team that’s focused on cyber security. So this way you can kill two birds with one stone.

If you are, you know, maybe a freshman or a sophomore junior, you know, I would say prioritize one over the other. Like really thinking about okay if I do cyber security this year I’ll just you know give this a try and then look at software engineering next year. But also I would just look at it based on team fit like whether it’s cyber security or software engineering does this team do you think this team is going to give you the most bang for your time over this internship and honestly I would go with that with that position.

So it’s almost like That’s where you’re going to learn the most where you maybe feel the most support. So, it’s almost like a gut feeling, right? Yes.

Yeah. I would say go with your gut. Like it’s not you can think about it from software engineering or cyber security but if I had two managers to choose from irrelevant of cyber security or software engineering I would go with the manager that I think I would work the best with and that will actually develop me the most because that’s what I’m here to do over this period of time.

Great advice. Is the technical interview process different for front-end roles compared to back-end roles? And does it still require a HackerRank leak code?

Great question. We actually have, and don’t quote me on this, but to answer the question, yes, the the front-end engineering is different from the backend development role. There’s also one for embedded engineers.

There’s also one for hardware development engineers. So just make making sure you read the job description. So this goes back to what I talked about at the very beginning, right?

Like what what AWS might title as a software engineer might not be what meta titles as a software engineer. So, making sure you read those job descriptions to really understand what those titles mean because they might require a different assessment. And the only difference between the backend and the front-end assessment is just that the front-end assessment is focused on front-end technology.

That’s all. All right. What’s the typical hiring process for a full-time new grad role at AWS?

After passing the online assessment and work style assessments, what’s the best way to follow up with recruiters and increase the chances of getting call backs for interviews? So once you comp so we have what we call a two and five policy. So you should know within two days of completing the coding interviews if we are going to invite you to the final round.

If you were talking about the final round of interviews, I’m not 100% sure because I haven’t worked in this space in a while, but I’m going to assume that it’s three rounds in the final round. You should know within five business days if we are going to move forward with next steps. Now how long it might take for you to be placed, I think that’s on a case by case situation.

All right. Is it true that the difficulty of questions on tech interviews has increased over the last few years? Say that one more time.

Is it true that the difficulty of questions in tech interviews has increased in the last past few years? I’m not quite sure. I I will say with the emergence of generative AI, companies are having to spend more time making sure that you know candidates are using their brains to complete the technical interview.

So, I think if you’re on the if you’re doing the right things, you should be fine because it really just comes down to, you know, thinking back to those list of data structures and algorithms that you want to be very proficient in. And as long as you have those and you know those very well, the the question shouldn’t really be difficult because you’re really just pulling from a list of concepts that you have an understanding for. All right.

One question that I struggle with a lot is where do you see yourself in five years? How would you answer this question? Wow.

Where do I see myself in five years? That’s a great question. To be honest, I’ve been having a wonderful time working for AWS and you know the opportunity to build things and watch people grow and watch people come to the company have have been very have been very great for me.

So who knows maybe I’ll still be at AWS. There there’s another level above so I’m a senior technical recruiter which is a level six. The next level is a level seven, which is a principal recruiter.

Now, this position doesn’t really exist at most other companies. So, if anything, I will become a principal recruiter, but I haven’t quite decided I wanted to to make that leap, but more likely. If you were an intern or a new grad, like how would you suggest that they think about answering a question like that?

I think it’s about you know actually just taking some time to plan that out right like and that will help you with determining which internship that you are going to take like really starting to work backwards from today knowing if you want to be a engineering manager if you want to be a product manager if you want to be a senior software engineer if you know you want to work in cyber security and really you know in interviews starting to talk about five years ahead. So I hope that answers the question but in general I would say make this a part of your own preparation for your interviews for your own personal development so that when you are asked that question you already know that you are prepared for the future. All right one final question.

Ready? Okay. What AWS certificates, if any, do you need to apply for a software internship at AWS?

Neither. We don’t require certifications for internships in entry level roles. It is something that can maybe help you, you know, prepare for the interview, but it’s not it’s not required.

All right. Well, great answer. Could you go back to the PowerPoint very quickly?

That would be a Jake question. Okay. Well, I’ll add it here in the He’s right here.

There you go. All right. 161 17.

Okay. Yeah, definitely feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. I I get a lot of messages and I’m sure I’m going to get even more today.

So if I don’t respond, it’s okay. I recommend if you really need to get in contact with me to connect with me on Instagram. You get a much faster response because I don’t get as many messages there and I do follow back.

But you can also follow me on LinkedIn. I do post a lot about interview prep. Definitely hope to see some of you on the call tomorrow to learn more about coding best practices.

Well, since technical interview is always top of mind for our students, I really really appreciate everything you’ve done in the session, Darius. It’s wonderful always to have you. I think this is our second year doing this together.

Yes. And I hope we do it next year again. No, thank you.

I have I am so amazed with the work that Cold Path is doing. I actually just met some students who came out of the the summer interview prep program. They were the ones that went to school in Atlanta and it was it was amazing.

So kudos to everyone on this call. Like this is a a program that I wish existed when I was in college because I have a lot of friends who were majoring in computer science and didn’t have the right support system or the right foundation or community that can get you exposure to companies like AWS. So yeah I I’m I’m I think everyone’s call is on on the right path.

Thank you so much. And with that please drop your appreciation here in the chat. Then please take a moment to fill out our session survey.

A link for that be popping up in your screen now. We also encourage you to go visit all of the presenters in the networking lounge as well as stopping by their virtual booth. And Darius’s booth is pretty sweet.

And now to close us out, here’s a brief video from our host Bobby D. We will now be transitioning into the open network session. Let me give you some information here.

It says that you can access the networking lounge to build connections. Now remember, network, it will be your net worth going forward. Remember that, Jim.

Or you can visit the company’s booth to learn more about the organizations joining us here at the summit. And don’t forget to drop your resume when you go visit them, too. Thank you so much.

We’ll see you in a little bit.