How Amazon Interviewers Use the STAR Method

Interview Tip

I’d bet a pretty penny that every reader has been in an interview where they were told:

“Tell me about your career”

Or

“Walk me through your resume”

These are general, open-ended questions that are typically a waste of time.

As a candidate, it shows me that you either don’t know what to ask or didn’t care to look at my resume.

As an interviewer, I don’t get anything that helps me decide on the candidate.

Sure, you could argue that if a candidate talks for 8 minutes straight without coming up for air that tells you they don’t have executive presence but is that the best way to evaluate for it?

Is this the best use of time?

If you think this only happens to entry-level candidates, you’re wrong.

In Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Insight Amazon, chapter two opens up with a VP from Amazon telling a story about how he was interviewing to be a COO at a company and the CEO of that company started the interview by using a similar tactic:

“Tell me something about yourself that isn’t apparent by reading your resume”

The Amazon VP wasn’t happy and did not continue interviewing with that company.

This entire chapter breaks down Amazon’s Unique Bar Raiser process which describes how they went from:

600 employees in 1997
9,000 employees in 2000
100,000 employees in 2013
Approached 1 million employees in 2020 (when the book was published)

One tiny, tiny part of this chapter is about behavioral interviews.

The goal of behavioral interviews is to evaluate how well the candidate’s past behavior and ways of working map to Amazon’s Leadership Principles (there were 14 at the time).

Amazon assigned one or more of the Leadership Principles to each interviewer.

Interviewers would ask open-ended questions that were pointed toward each principle with the intent to get a candidate's response that:

1. Has detailed examples of how the candidate solved tough problems or performed in similar situations they'd face at Amazon
2. Outlines how they accomplished the goals which would allow the interviewer to assess whether or not it aligns with how work is done at Amazon

After the candidate answers, the interviewer digs deeper.

Candidates conflate answers so each follow-up question is designed to draw more out to evaluate what part the candidate actually played.

Amazon interviewers use the STAR method to help them evaluate.

What is the SITUATION?
What were you TASKED with?
What ACTIONS did you take?
What was the RESULT?

They probed on each until they felt like they got enough to make a decision.

I map this out to provide a format for any interviewer to do the same.

Let’s say you’re interviewing a candidate for a team you’re not on but would work with.

I’ll use an AE interviewing a CSM as an example.

An AE saying, “Walk me through a time when you worked with an AE to handoff a customer and the customer went dark for the first 90 days?”

After they answer, dig deeper. Use these to find out what the real deal is :)

What is the SITUATION?
What were you TASKED with?
What ACTIONS did you take?
What was the result?

If they cover these lightly when they answer the first time around, come back to each one.

You should be taking notes and be able to write/explain your decision on the candidate based on these answers in the feedback form/candidate debrief.