Amazon Interview Questions by Leadership Principles
Amazon Interview Questions by Leadership Principles
Amazon Interview Questions by Leadership Principles
Action Plan:
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Amazon Practice Interview Questions by Leadership Principle
1. Tell me about a time when you didn't have enough data to make the right decision. What did you do? What path did you take? Did the decision turn out to
be the correct one?
2. Tell me about a strategic decision you had to make without clear data or benchmarks. How did you make your final decision? What alternatives did you
consider? What were the tradeoffs of each? How did you mitigate risk?
3. **Tell me about a time when you made a difficult decision with input from many different sources (customers, stakeholders, partner teams, etc.). What
4. **We don't always make the right decision all the time. Tell me about a time when you made a bad decision. What was the impact of that decision? What
did you learn? How have you applied what you learned?
5. don't always make the right judgment all the time. Tell me about a time when you made an error in judgment. What was the impact? What did you learn?
How have you applied what you learned?
S During my initial days as a requirements analyst at Accenture, I was responsible for drafting system requirements for my development team.
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Amazon Practice Interview Questions by Leadership Principle
6. Tell me about a time when you discovered that your idea was not the best course of action. What was your idea? Why wasn't your idea the best course of
action? How did you find out it was not the correct path? What was the best course of action? Who provided it? What did you learn from the experience?
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7. Describe a time when you brought different perspectives together to solve a problem. What types of different perspectives were represented? How did
you seek out different points of view? What was the outcome? Were there any key learnings from this experience? Knowing what you know now, would you
have done anything different? (New Hires were not getting their IT Equipment on their first day?)
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Amazon Practice Interview Questions by Leadership Principle
1. Give me an example of a calculated risk that you have taken where speed was critical. What was the situation and how did you handle it? What steps did
you take to mitigate the risk? What was the outcome? Knowing what you know now, would you have done anything differently?
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2. Tell me about a time when you worked against tight deadlines and didn't have time to consider all options before making a decision. How much time did
you have? What approach did you take? What did you learn from the situation?
3. Describe a situation where you made an important business decision without consulting your manager. What was the situation and how did it turn out?
Would you have done anything differently?
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Amazon Practice Interview Questions by Leadership Principle
4. Tell me about a time when you had to gather information and respond immediately to a situation. What was the outcome? Would you have done
anything differently?
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5. Give me an example of when you had to make an important decision and had to decide between moving forward or gathering more information. What
did you do? What was the outcome? What information is necessary for you to have before acting?
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6. Tell me about a time when you saw an issue that would impact your team and took a proactive approach to solve it. What was the issue? What did you
do and what was the outcome? What did you learn from this situation?
7. Tell me about a time when you felt your team was not moving to action quickly enough. What was the situation? What did you do? What was the
outcome? Would you have done anything differently? (Manager)
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8. Tell me about a time when you were able to remove a serious roadblock/barrier preventing your team from making progress. What was the barrier? How
were you able to remove it? What was the outcome? Knowing what you know now, would you have done anything differently? (Manager)
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Amazon Practice Interview Questions by Leadership Principle
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CUSTOMER OBSESSION
1. Describe a difficult interaction you had with a customer. How did you deal with it? What was the outcome? How would you handle it differently?
2. Tell me about a time when you went above and beyond for a customer. Why did you do it? How did the customer respond? What was the outcome?
Last year while working on an audit assignment for a medical equipment manufacturer, I realized that their debt collection from foreign receivables was not
monitored well
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Amazon Practice Interview Questions by Leadership Principle
3. Give me an example of when you were able to anticipate a customer need with a solution/product they didn't know they needed/wanted yet. How did
you know they needed this? How did they respond?
S While working on an agency messaging system for an Insurance firm
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4. Give me an example of a time when you asked for customer feedback. How did you use that feedback to drive innovation or improvement? How did the
customer respond?
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5. Tell me about a time when you evaluated the customer experience of your product or service. What did you do? What was the result?
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6. Tell me about a time when a customer came to you for something that wouldn't actually address their need. How did you approach the situation? What
was the result?
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7. Sometimes customers make unreasonable requests. Tell me about a time when you've had to push back or say no to a customer request. What did you
say or do in response to that request?
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8. Tell me about a time when you had to balance the needs of the customer with the needs of the business. What did you do? What was the result?
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Amazon Practice Interview Questions by Leadership Principle
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DELIVER RESULTS
1. Give me an example of a time when you were able to deliver an important project under a tight deadline . What sacrifices did you have to make to meet
the deadline? How did they impact the final deliverable? What was the final outcome?
2. Tell me about a time when you had significant, unanticipated obstacles to overcome in achieving a key goal. What was the obstacle? Were you eventually
successful? Knowing what you know now, is there anything you would have done differently?
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3. Tell me about a time when you not only met a goal but considerably exceeded expectations. How were you able to do it? What challenges did you have to
overcome?
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Amazon Practice Interview Questions by Leadership Principle
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4. Tell me about a time when you or your team were more than halfway to meeting a goal when you realized it may not be the right goal or may have
unintended consequences. What was the situation? What did you do? What was the outcome? Looking back, would you have done anything differently?
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5. Give me an example of a mission or goal you didn’t think was achievable. What was it and how did you help your team try to achieve it? Were you
successful in the end? Looking back, would you have done anything differently?
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6. Tell me about a time when you did not effectively manage your projects, and something did not get completed on time. What was the impact? What
approaches do you use to make sure you are focusing on the right deliverables when you have several competing priorities?
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DIVE DEEP
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Amazon Practice Interview Questions by Leadership Principle
1. Tell me about a time when you were trying to understand a complex problem on your team, and you had to dig into the details to figure it out . Who did
you talk with or where did you have to look to find the most valuable information? How did you use that information to help solve the problem?
2. Tell me about a situation that required you to dig deep to get to the root cause. How did you know you were focusing on the right things? What was the
outcome? Would you have done anything differently?
3. Tell me about a problem you had to solve that required in-depth thought and analysis. How did you know you were focusing on the right things? What
was the outcome? Would you have done anything differently?
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Amazon Practice Interview Questions by Leadership Principle
4. Walk me through a big problem or issue in your organization that you helped to solve. How did you become aware of it? What information did you
gather? What information was missing and how did you fill the gaps? Did you do a reflection at the conclusion of the project? If so, what did you learn?
5. Tell me about a specific metric you have used to identify a need for a change in your department. Did you create the metric or was it already available?
How did this and other information influence the change? What was the outcome of this change?
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6. Have you ever created a metric that helped identify a need for a change in your department? What was the metric? Why did you create it? How did this
and other information influence change? What was the outcome of the change?
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7. Tell me about a time when you had to validate the assumptions underlying a direct report's project. How did you decide follow up was necessary? What
steps, if any, did you take to validate the assumptions? What was the result? (Manager)
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Amazon Practice Interview Questions by Leadership Principle
EARN TRUST
1. Tell me about a time when you had to communicate a change in direction that you anticipated people would have concerns with . What did you do to
understand the concerns and mitigate them? Were there any changes you made along the way after hearing these concerns? How did you handle
questions and/or resistance? Were you able to get people comfortable with the change?
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2. Give me an example of a tough or critical piece of feedback you received. What was it and what did you do about it?
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3. Describe a time when you needed to influence a peer who had a differing opinion about a shared goal. What did you do? What was the outcome?
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Amazon Practice Interview Questions by Leadership Principle
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4. Give me an example of a time when you were not able to meet a commitment. What was the commitment and what were the obstacles that
prevented success? What was the impact to your customers/peers and what did you learn from it?
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5. Tell me about a time when your team’s goals were out of alignment with another team you relied on in order to meet your goal. How did you work
with the other team? Were you able to achieve your goals?
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6. Tell me about a time when you uncovered a significant problem in your team. What was it and how did you communicate it to your manager and other
stakeholders? What did you do to address the problem? How did you manage the impact of this problem for the rest of your team?
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7. Describe a time when you improved morale and productivity on your team. What were the underlying problems and their causes? How did you
prevent them from negatively impacting the team in the future?
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8. Tell me about a time when a team member was struggling to keep up or fit in and you stepped in to help out. Why did you think they were struggling
or not fitting in? Why did you decide in step in and support? What did you do to help out? How did it impact your work? What was the outcome? What
did you learn from that situation?
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Amazon Practice Interview Questions by Leadership Principle
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9. Tell me about a time when a team member was not performing well and impacted your work. How did you handle that situation? Why were they not
performing well? What was the outcome? What did you learn from that situation?
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FRUGALITY
1. Give me an example of how you have helped save costs or eliminate waste within your role or organization . What was the situation? What was the
impact?
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2. Describe a time when you had to get a project or initiative completed with limited resources. How did you approach the situation? What was the
impact? Knowing what you know now, would you have done anything differently?
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Amazon Practice Interview Questions by Leadership Principle
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3. Tell me about a time when you didn’t have enough resources to do something you felt was important but found a creative way to get it done
anyway. What was the situation? What other options did you consider? How did you decide on a path forward? What was the outcome?
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4. ** Tell me about a time when you had to make tradeoffs between quality and cost. How did you weigh the options? What was the result? Would you
have done anything differently?
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5. Tell me about a time when you generated a creative solution to a problem or project without requiring additional resources. What was the problem?
What was the solution and how did you come up with it? What was the outcome?
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6. Give an example of a time you requested additional funding/budget to complete a project. Why was it needed? Did you try to figure out another
approach? Did you get the additional resources? Why or why not?
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7. Describe a time when you had to decide whether or not to award or ask for additional resources. What criteria do you use for making the call? What
was the outcome? Knowing what you know now, would you have done anything differently? (Manager)
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Amazon Practice Interview Questions by Leadership Principle
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8. Give an example of a time when you challenged your team to come up with a more efficient solution or process. What drove the request? How did
you help? What were some of your biggest challenges? What were the end results? (Manager)
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1. Tell me about a time when you strongly disagreed with your manager or peer on something you considered very important to the business. What was
it and how did you handle it? Knowing what you know now, would you do anything differently?
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Amazon Practice Interview Questions by Leadership Principle
2. Describe a time when you took an unpopular stance in a meeting with peers and your leader. What was it? Why did you feel strongly about it? What
did you do? What was the outcome?
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3. Often, we must make decisions as a group. Give me an example of a time you committed to a group decision even though you disagreed. What
factors led you to commit to the decision? Would you make the same decision now?
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4. Describe a time when you felt really strongly about something on a project but the team decided to go in a different direction. How hard did you press
the issue? How did you approach that project afterward?
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5. Tell me about a time when you pushed back against a decision that negatively impacted your team. What was the issue? How did it turn out? Would
you have done anything differently?
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6. Give me an example of when you submitted a great idea to your manager and they did not support it. What was the idea? How did you handle the
lack of support?
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Amazon Practice Interview Questions by Leadership Principle
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7. Describe a time when you had to support a business initiative that you didn't agree with. How did you handle it? How did you deliver the message to
your team?
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8. Tell me about a time when the business gained something because you persisted for a length of time. Why were you so determined? How did it turn
out?
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1. Tell me about a time when you helped one of your team members develop their career. How did you help that team member? What was the result?
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Amazon Practice Interview Questions by Leadership Principle
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2. Tell me about a time when you invested in an employee's development. What did you invest in and why? What was the outcome? Can you share an
example where investing in an employee's development didn't work out?
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3. Give me an example of a time you provided feedback to develop the strengths of someone on your team . Were you able to positively impact their
performance?
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4. Tell me about a time when you provided coaching for a team member. What started the coaching? What was the outcome?
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5. Tell me about someone you hired that you thought complemented your skills. How did you coach an individual in areas where you have a weakness?
(Manager)
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6. Tell me about a time when you helped a remote team member develop their career. Can you give me an example of a specific team member and how you
helped them develop across the geographic distance? (Manager)
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Amazon Practice Interview Questions by Leadership Principle
7. Describe a person who struggled to get promoted under your leadership and how you helped facilitate their success. (Manager)
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8. Tell me about your most challenging talent review and promotion process that you conducted for your team . What made it challenging? What factors did
you consider in your talent review? What factors did you consider in the promotion process? Did you incorporate a tool to counter unconscious bias? If yes,
how? How do you manage perceptions of unfair treatment? What did you learn from this process? Knowing what you know now, would you have done
anything different? (Manager)
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9. Describe a time when you constructed a team to accomplish a goal. What factors did you consider in constructing the team? Did you factor diversity into
your team construction? How did you balance work requirements, team skill composition, and team stretch opportunities? What do you consider when you
allocate work? How did you ensure team members were able to work effectively together? Would you have done anything differently? (Manager)
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10. Tell me about a time when you had a low performing individual on your team. How did you deliver feedback? Did their performance improve? (Manager)
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Amazon Practice Interview Questions by Leadership Principle
INSIST ON THE HIGHEST STANDARDS
1. Describe a time when you refused to compromise your standards around quality/customer service, etc. Who was your customer? What was the
result?
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2. Tell me about a time when you were unsatisfied with the status quo. What did you do to change it? What was the impact? Would you do anything
differently in the future?
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3. Tell me about a time when you worked to improve the quality of a product / service / solution that was already getting good customer
feedback. Why did you think it needed improvement? How did customers react?
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Amazon Practice Interview Questions by Leadership Principle
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4. Tell me about a time when you had to make a decision between standards and delivery. What tradeoffs did you have make? What was the outcome?
Knowing what you know now, would you have done anything differently?
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5. Give me an example of a goal you’ve had where you wish you had done better. What was the goal? How could you have improved on it?
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6. Describe the most significant continuous improvement project that you led. What was the catalyst to this change and how did you go about it? What
was the outcome?
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7. Tell me about a time when you used feedback about your team to drive a change. How did you gather or receive feedback on your team's
performance? What was the outcome? (Manager)
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Amazon Practice Interview Questions by Leadership Principle
2. Describe the most innovative thing you’ve done and why you thought it was innovative. Ask for one or two more examples to see if it's a pattern of
innovative thinking. What was the problem it was solving? What was innovative about it?
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Amazon Practice Interview Questions by Leadership Principle
3. Tell me about a time when you were able to make something simpler for customers. What drove you to implement this change? What was the impact?
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4. Describe a time when you influenced and drove new thinking and innovation out of your team. Give an example of how your approach led to a specific
innovation.
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5. Tell me about a time when you had a challenging problem or situation that the usual approach wouldn't address. How did you select an alternative
approach? What alternative approach(es) did you consider? What was the end result? What was the impact?
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6. Tell me about a novel idea you had or decision you made that had a big impact on your business. What was novel about it?
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7. Tell me about a time when you enabled your team/a team member to implement a significant change or improvement. What problem were you
trying to solve? How did you measure success? What was the end result/impact? (Manager)
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Amazon Practice Interview Questions by Leadership Principle
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Amazon Practice Interview Questions by Leadership Principle
1. Tell me about a time when you realized you needed a deeper level of subject matter expertise to do your job well. What did you do about it? What
was the outcome? Is there anything you would have done differently?
2. Describe a time when you took on work outside of your comfort area. How did you identify what you needed to learn to be successful? How did you go
about building expertise to meet your goal? Did you meet your goal?
3. Tell me about a time when you didn’t know what to do next or how to solve a challenging problem. How do you learn what you don't know? What
were the options you considered? How did you decide the best path forward? What was the outcome?
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Amazon Practice Interview Questions by Leadership Principle
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4. We all have things about ourselves we'd like to improve on at work. Give me an example of something that you've worked on to improve your
overall work effectiveness. What resources did you identify to help you develop? What was the impact?
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5. Give me an example of a time when you explored a new or unexpected area of an existing space. Why hadn't this been explored already? Why did you
move forward? What were the results or what was the impact?
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6. Describe a time when someone on your team challenged you to think differently about a problem. What was the situation? How did you respond?
What was the outcome?
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7. Tell me about a time when you used external trends to improve your own company's products or services. How did you keep up to date with external
trends? How did you decide to apply them to your own company? What was the result?
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Amazon Practice Interview Questions by Leadership Principle
OWNERSHIP
1. Tell me about a time when you took on something significant outside your area of responsibility. Why was it important? What was the outcome?
2. Describe a time when you didn't think you were going to meet a commitment you promised. How did you identify the risk and communicate it to
stakeholders? Is there anything you would do differently?
3. Give me an example of an initiative you undertook because you saw that it could benefit the whole company or your customers, but wasn’t within
any group’s individual responsibility so nothing was being done.
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Amazon Practice Interview Questions by Leadership Principle
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4. Tell me about a time when you made a hard decision to sacrifice short term gain for something that would create long term value for the
business. What was the outcome? Knowing what you know now, would you have done anything differently?
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5. Describe a time when you had to transition a project you owned to a new owner. What steps did you take to make sure the transition went smoothly?
Tell me about a time that you chose to get involved in a project that you had already transitioned to somebody else. What was the situation? Why was it
important to get involved?
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6. Tell me about a time when you saw a peer struggling and decided to step in and help. What was the situation? Why did you decide to step in? What
actions did you take?
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THINK BIG
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Amazon Practice Interview Questions by Leadership Principle
1. Tell me about time when you were working on an initiative or goal and saw an opportunity to do something much bigger or better than the initial
focus. Did you take that opportunity? Why or why not? What was the outcome?
2. Give me an example of how you have changed the direction or view of a specific function/department and helped them embrace a new way of
thinking. Why was a change needed? What was the outcome?
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3. Give me an example of a time you proposed a novel approach to a problem. What was the problem and why did it require a novel approach? Was your
approach successful?
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4. Tell me about a time when you drove adoption for your vision/ideas. How did you know your vision/idea was adopted by others? How did you drive
adoption for your vision/ideas? How did you track adoption? Would you do anything differently?
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Amazon Practice Interview Questions by Leadership Principle
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5. Give me an example of an idea or vision you had which was adopted by global stakeholders. How did you drive adoption for your vision/ideas? How
did you track adoption? Would you do anything differently?
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6. Tell me about a time when you thought differently to improve a process that was working. What assumptions did you have to question? How did you
evaluate if the change improved the process? Knowing what you know now, would you do anything differently?
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How did they manage their associates? Manage their data center , they need to have some level of technical capacity? From the
By 2030, 2 million – 3 million people to ve cloud based, associates. HR people from AWS, might be driving this program, to get associates to get training.
Who are these people? How are they identifying people to upscale? Are they required to do this program?
Training program -
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Amazon Practice Interview Questions by Leadership Principle
STAR WORKSHEET
Your Behavioral Question: __________________________________________________________________ Leadership Principle: ______________________________________
Choose behavioral question that provoke specific examples or stories for your assigned Leadership Principle(s).
Process the example using STAR. Stories have beginnings (Situation/Task), middle (Actions) and ends (Results).
Once you have established the story, PROBE to dive deeper on your assigned competency (Leadership Principle), get clarity or pursue a concern.
If appropriate, CHALLENGE the candidate’s statements, decisions or thought process.
SITUATION/TASK - Describe the situation/task you faced and the context of the story Notes
S Answers the questions: where did this occur, when did it happen, why is it important?
Probing Questions:
Why is this important? What was the goal?
What was the initial scope of the project? What were the challenges?
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What were the risks and potential consequences if nothing happened?
Challenge Questions:
Why did you choose this story to illustrate a xyz accomplishment?
What other stories can you think of that demonstrate…xyz?
Could you come up with an example that is more recent?
ACTION - What actions did you take?
A Answers the questions: what did you personally own, how did you do it, who else was involved?
Probing Questions:
Deep probe functional expertise and/or assigned core competency.
Were you the key driver or project owner?
What was your biggest contribution? What unique value did you bring?
What were the most significant obstacles you faced? How did you overcome them?
Challenge Questions:
What did you do specifically versus the team?
How did you set priorities…deal with xyz problem… or get manager buy-in?
What decisions did you challenge? Why? How did you influence the right outcome?
RESULTS - How did you measure success for this project?
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What results did you achieve?
$ Cost savings, revenue generation
# Quantify to understand volume, size, scale
% Percentage change, year over year improvements
Time to market, implementation time, time savings
Impact on the customer, the team
Quality improvements
Probing Questions:
Why did you choose to focus on these results? What other results were important?
You mentioned revenue, what percentage change is that year over year?
What trade-offs did you have to make to achieve this? (quality, cost, time)
I’m concerned about…(the time it took, the volume, the customer impact), tell me more…
Challenge Questions:
What were the lessons learned? What would you have done differently?
How would you implement this at Amazon?
How did these results compare to your actual goals? (refer back to goal stated in Situation)
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Amazon Practice Interview Questions by Leadership Principle
Resume Dissection:
Honors & Leadership: Dean’s Merit Scholarship (75% Tuition); GMAT 760; AVP Casing, High Tech Association
Memberships: Marshall Consulting & Strategy Club; Energy & Sustainability Club; Graduate Women in Business
Honors & Leadership: Tuition Scholarship (academic, top 5%); Vice-Captain Basketball Team 2015 and 2016; Volunteer at Pratigya NGO tutoring underprivileged
students; VP - Content for local Corporate-Student conclave
Cultural Exchange: Organized international summer program in China for AIESEC (Youth-run, not-for-profit), mentoring high school seniors on topics related to
diversity, equity and inclusion through team building exercises
EXPERIENCE
Innovated Agile-based requirements analysis framework and used it to cross-train four development teams across multiple internal systems and processes; streamlined
overall project delivery and reduced turn-around time by 20%
Drove policy upsell via online service channel by 7% for US insurer; supervised resource planning and hiring of business systems analysts and collaborated with business
& design teams to strategize application feature roadmap
Led 80+ user feedback resolutions for B2B & B2C features with product manager and QA lead; analyzed UX data to validate key hypothesis, negotiated tradeoffs &
managed release; boosted customer satisfaction score by 30%
Spearheaded business and technology integration for self-service-based process automation of auto insurance app; directed a five-analyst team and automated 50,000
monthly policy transactions on AWS Cloud, reducing the total operating costs by 17%; recognized with “ACE” award (for top 5% performers across all Tech Offices in
India)
Strategized, launched and tested policy cancel and billing features for top insurer; devised toggle web service and teamed with product marketing to plan & conduct A/B
testing for 50 U.S. States; grew mobile app ratings from 2.7 to 4.3 (scale of 5) in one year, enhancing online customer experience; awarded “XtraMile” for collaboration
skills
Launched driver analytics feature in self-service auto insurance app, offering up to 20% discounts on premium per telematics-based driving behavior data and
incentivizing safe driving practices; increased active app usage by 15%
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Amazon Practice Interview Questions by Leadership Principle
Application Development Analyst (July 2018 – November 2020)
Enabled real-time alerts on external agency app to better track customer self-service policy changes; conducted feasibility analysis via MVP and subsequent prototypes;
enhanced customer interactions for 80,000+ insurance agents across four more business lines based on excellent user feedback; awarded Distinguished Analyst by client
Planned and drove three business features as Agile Scrum Master for front-end insurance app; prioritized product backlog into bi-weekly sprints, and managed project
delivery via KPI reporting to Accenture and client leadership
Automated document generation via customer self-service app for top-tier property insurer; integrated process with client’s Contact Manager on IBM FileNet &
Salesforce CRM platforms; eliminated 10,000 monthly tele-inquiries
Reduced functional testing time by 85% for Canadian Bank; coded business rules in MS Excel and recommended data management solutions to Accenture leadership for
1000+ transactions; recognized with fast-track promotion
Proactively organized monthly knowledge sessions for financial services business unit, inviting in-house expert speakers on emerging tech trends and skills such as data
analytics, machine learning, and product management
Certificates: Data Science (Analytix Labs 2019); Fintech (Wharton 2021); Professional Scrum Master (2021)
Hobbies: Published Poet (Soul Lit Society); Guitarist (Indie); Painting, 3D Art; Marketing associate for local artist
Volunteer: Career Mentor at Talent Tap (Accenture CSR), Web designer at Chaanan NGO, Missing Maps (OSM)
Computing Skills & Tools: Agile Project Management, Microsoft 365 – Excel/Power Point, Tableau, SQL, Python, R, Rally, Jira, Splunk, .Net Framework, MongoDB,
InVision, Visio, Confluence, Postman, Soap UI, C, C++, Java
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Resume Stories:
1. HTA Story:
AVP Casing of HTA
Have organized SS1, SS2 and working on SS3. Coordinating with Events, Alumni Relations, and Marketing Teams to facilitate and run the event. Helped 50+ members practice interviewing with
second years and alumni. Assisted with Casing questions and live workshops. Helped members link with alumni of their choice and assisted with any issues in terms of interview timings.
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Amazon Practice Interview Questions by Leadership Principle
During Covid, many people were leaving Accenture and development teams was getting filled with new, inexperienced talent. I was leading a team of systems analysts for a Customer Self-Service
project. While training new joiners in my team, I saw that similar problems were prevailing in my other partner teams too. Documentation was an issue. Many were not updated and could not be
relied upon – because the teams had migrated from waterfall to agile and so all content was scattered into multiple user stories and features within Rally (Project Management Software). Basically,
data was not structured and thus not available, which increased dependencies on individual contributors. The above two reasons lead to increased wait time in getting product development. To
mitigate this issue, I then started looking into training programs. Initially I wanted to create a new program by first gathering all data relevant to a given system. However, upon diving deeper I saw
that this would take up a lot of time. In our projects, I saw that we were already having technical stories that had zero points, which were used by developers and analysts to track progress that
went into system analysis. In this light, I came up with the idea of using Agile for cross-training partner teams on how to analyze systems in general – exposing them to the various tools that I would
use as a systems analyst. This would help reduce dependency, and at the same time empower them to explore systems and learn to work with less data. My job had always been exploratory in the
sense that Agile was less documented, and I wanted to make sure I instill this ability in others. We had bi-weekly sessions for three months, and finally I was able to train 6 analysts on how to
develop useful functional hypothesis and use various analysis tools to validate them. My team was able to become much more efficient and I was appreciated by my clients for my creativity. In the
end we were able to save almost 20% in turnaround time.
The COVID-19 pandemic dramatically and rapidly changed work norms at Accenture, creating a lot of uncertainty; our first large-scale ‘work from home’ migration - over 100K employees were
relocated in a week. Almost 70% of my project team was unable to perform due to difficult home situations, some due to family commitments and others due to lack of infrastructure. Supporting
this transition to a new working style, one of my most rewarding leadership experiences was a project wide cross-training initiative. My aim when I proposed this to my manager was to cross-train
associates in different functional areas so they could take over different roles as required.
With a team of 3, I set out to prepare a program curriculum and strategy. Ours was one of the most resource-heavy projects at Accenture, with 20+ independent business operations and multiple
microservices, both frontend and backend. Here, our first challenge came in terms of documenting past work. Given the nature of agile, requirements were dynamic, expected to change multiple
times during a release, and these changes being spread across various teams and timelines - we lacked a single source of truth. Attempting to organize the information, we realized that our timeline
would get stretched unacceptably if we continued in this vein. Instead, a better approach was to inherently link training with problem solving; knowledge is always a complex variable, and so
instead of providing associates with theoretical material, what we needed was to encourage these curious, driven individuals to pursue expertise. We decided to implement an agile framework on
training programs - extending the agile methodology to include cross-training stories in each sprint. This approach solved another challenge we faced, that of motivation. With work from home
challenges already present, keeping motivation high on this voluntary training was difficult. Assigning story points and including it in deliverable quality and KPIs changed this across the board.
Those interested in different functions in fact seeked out these opportunities to learn.
A mindset impact we saw was that individual contribution started to be looked at not to deliver one’s work, but rather to drive impact throughout the team on a broader scale. The agile inclusion
intrinsically meant more collaboration and associates started showing their training efforts as confidently and transparently as regular development work.
This cross-functional, agile infused program through which we successfully cross trained 20 associates, helped our project work through a highly uncertain time without diminishing work quality or
delaying timelines. The training methodology has now been expanded in the service line, with a planned office wide implementation early next year.
This project was related to implementing a new feature in MyT for selling umbrella policies in addition to Auto policies. Being a team lead for my team, I was tasked with hiring of new analysts to
work on the business and tech integration. Collaborating with my supervisor on handling interviews, I learnt the questions to ask for behavioral and technical questions and was responsible for
training them here after. Also assisted dec teams with defect triage.
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Amazon Practice Interview Questions by Leadership Principle
4. PKE resolutions:
Led 80+ user feedback resolutions for B2B & B2C features with product manager and QA lead; analyzed UX data to validate key hypothesis, negotiated tradeoffs & managed release; boosted
customer satisfaction score by 30%
A key part of my role as a systems analyst was to manage PKE defects after a feature was released. This process included developing hypothesis on perspective problems, managing communication
with relevant stakeholders, and working with development and quality teams to ensure timely E2E release. As such, I have solved over 80 defects raised by end customers – ranging from mild to
critical. These experiences have helped me in numerous ways – from deeply analyzing existing, legacy systems to managing conflict between various partner teams on why certain flows were
failing. In one issue I was tasked with understanding why upon cancelling policies, refund amounts were not getting derived accurately. The initial design was made based on faulty assumptions and
had missed use cases such as one when the policy is auto renewed. When cancelling such policies, for whom premium had already been paid, the internal balance amount was not getting
accurately derived within the system. To analyze this issue, I initiated communications with billing teams, understood their business rules and learnt how to use internal calculators. Then I
collaborated with Data Management team to string out key scenarios for E2E testing. We found essentially that the internal due amount was present in a different response node. Upon
accommodating that, we could get closer to the actual value.
While working on defects on TSAPI, I would browse and understand the actual service level code – written in C# language, in .Net Framework. From the existing codes, I would map and validate
business rules and make sure they were in Lync with expectation. I was the primary analyst for TSAPI, and this was involved with all business level conversation on upcoming usability and feature
enhancement. There came a time when we would 50+ service receive errors every day, and so I helped maintain proper regression testing for TSAPI for a month.
During my EOI experience, I literally taught the Data Management team on how to bench policies between various development environments with respect to CRDB and Billing systems. All defects
would first be assigned to me, where I would functionally test across the various error codes, assess the systems involved, provide hypothesis and maintain stakeholder engagement. This helped
me gain recognition with my clients as someone who could get the work done with minimal resources – by strategizing and targeting the most impactful items first.
5. New UI, UX Designs for Self-service Policy Change – Auto (add driver, add vehicle, replace driver, replace vehicle, change address, change coverage), Home (Mortgagee change)
Spearheaded business and technology integration for self-service-based process automation of auto insurance app; directed a five-analyst team and automated 50,000 monthly policy transactions
on AWS Cloud, reducing the total operating costs by 17%; recognized with “ACE” award (for top 5% performers across all Tech Offices in India)
Here we implemented new UI and UX designs and revamped the existing business flows for self-service based policy change transactions – add/replace/delete Vehicle and Driver, Change Address,
Change Coverage, and Mortgagee Change. My work involved taking functional ownership of the new designs. First, I and my fellow Business Analyst worked with the UI/UX Teams to understand
the new business flows. Then I collaborated with the app designer to understand the prospective system design and services. With an idea of what was to be called, I worked with individual partner
teams to ensure that data flow was happening properly – this meant drafting and maintaining mapping and data definition sheets. We were creating a new service for doing this process – calling Z-
Con for making policy changes. I worked with my designer for drafting the data contracts, got requirements from partner teams to use their services internally, and basically owned the functional
flow of ensuring a policy change on the back end. For Mortgagee Change, we developed a whole new service on ZCon and IA – for executing the change. We also worked on the UI/UX side of the
web application, covering 5 different pages as the customer progressed towards the actual change – ensuring that our customers would get the best of all their coverage views. Then we also
integrated the EOI service here at the end.
Worked with my team’s BA to expose different policy change transactions (Add/Delete/Update Driver, Add/Delete/Edit Vehicle, Change Address, Change Coverages) to different states, based on a
release schedule. Went through the business requirements for each state and ensured that the data we were getting from the back end rating system was accurate. Implemented rules on the UI
side as well. Collaborated with partner teams working on employee-facing applications, back-end rating systems, and other internal teams to ensure proper integration. Later, we also worked on
improving the emails for this flow. The business decision came to migrate from our current emailing vendor to Salesforce. In order to do this, I was given the responsibility to work with two other
teams - eCommunications and Salesforce, and to ensure that the new emails are getting delivered properly. The expectation was to keep both old and new vendors switchable using a separate
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Amazon Practice Interview Questions by Leadership Principle
service call that would toggle based on system date. This activity meant doing a new service call to drop a short info message on the enterprise exchange platform. This message would then be
picked up by eComm Team. They would verify it and then pass it along to SFMC for email generation. I made sure to maintain proper written and verbal communication throughout the work. Then
while constructing the message structure with my designer and partner teams, I came up with a few observations. I saw that the mailing and residence addresses were not being sent. We had a
little back and forth with business and eventually saw this as a requirements miss. The work went smoothly, and I was greatly appreciated on email and by my clients. Even here, many defects used
to come in my plate. A POC level visibility was evident.
Purpose: To enable customers to make mortgagee level changes on their own. Here I was asked to replace my onshore lead mid-way. I, along with a new associate, drove the functional
requirements for the entire business flow. From the UI/UX Design we acquired from business, we addressed all the data requirements for each page within the flow. Then we worked with the
rating team, and other partner teams such as contact management and the travelers management system team to create detailed mapping documents and data contracts. Post that, we assisted
developers with cross-functional coordination and collaboration.
6. Policy Cancel feature for Auto and Property – A/B Testing using Toggle Service
Strategized, launched and tested policy cancel and billing features for top insurer; devised toggle web service and teamed with product marketing to plan & conduct A/B testing for 50 U.S. States;
grew mobile app ratings from 2.7 to 4.3 (scale of 5) in one year, enhancing online customer experience; awarded “XtraMile” for collaboration skills
Covid meant that many customers wanted policies in their control, and cancellation was one key issue many customers faced a challenge with. The existing cancellation was done vis customer
representatives and was a tedious, time-consuming process. At the same time client’s self-service app was not doing well on mobile store. The idea was to ensure people felt they had more control
over what they wanted to do with their policies. This was where I learnt how to delegate work across my associates.
Started as the system requirements lead during PI (Release) planning meeting – splitting policy cancel and billing operations into multiple features – Foundational, UI/UX, Customer Eligibility, Dark
Release and Final Release. I helped with plotting early dependencies in terms of teams involved, resources needed, and time estimate. Then I was part of the business and UI/UX meetings on which
web pages to include within the customer journey. From a design perspective we had 5 components – Eligibility check based on general policy details, Permissions evaluation from various services
involved and agent codes, issuance call to backend system, derivation of refund amount, and customer record management for Business centers.
The initial stage of the project focused on releasing this feature across only a handful of states, and we controlled this using a new Toggle Feature Service. Depending on where the customer was
accessing the app from, we assigned an A/B test structure. This allowed us to see the initial customer response at those states which had raised most of the concerns related to policy cancel.
I took ownership of issuance call and record management and my associated started their work on permissions and refund pieces. We then collaborated on the error codes and knockout scenarios,
which came quite handy during the postproduction defect analysis. A new associate had joined the team and was trying to figure out root cause of seven integration issue. It had been almost 2
months without much progress. I worked tirelessly on the issue, analyzing the data contracts and actual internal calls. I was able to solve 5 issues in about a week and received the Xtra Mile award
from my clients got collaboration skills.
Eventually, given the ease of use and utility, this project helped raise customer ratings on Mobile App store from 2.7 to 4.3.
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Amazon Practice Interview Questions by Leadership Principle
8. AAME – prototyping for both auto and property – MyT and SUI initiated.
Enabled real-time alerts on external agency app to better track customer self-service policy changes; conducted feasibility analysis via MVP and subsequent prototypes; enhanced customer
interactions for 80,000+ insurance agents across four more business lines based on excellent user feedback; awarded Distinguished Analyst by client
Here the purpose of AAME was to enable Realtime alerts for external agents whenever their respective customers issues a self-service policy change transaction. The existing functionality worked
on a batch basis, where the agents would get to know about these changes at the end of the day. However, this would hinder same day communication between agents and customers. The
objective was to streamline agent-customer interactions.
Again, was the sole requirements analyst for this work. But this time I had a senior BA (associate manager) working with me. He was initially a Liaison between the dev team and the business
owners. However, by the end of this piece, I became the POC (because the work was more technical in nature)
Managed the flow of data from - A backend system, an agent identification system, and the vendor’s authentication and message posting system.
Worked with another team who was handling daily batch downloads of these notifications. (Once a day list of transactions). We formed the technical requirements around that.
Completed the end-to-end analysts of the entire flow. Refined user stories. Did the entire testing on my own.
My visibility was quite high this time around. The business owners, and Kshitij (Accenture senior manager) felt very comfortable working with me. Kshitij used to joke around that I was a major
stress reliever - It’s Siddharth, I have no concerns.
The application went flawlessly, and I was even featured in one of the internal publications, and emails.
Afterwards, we expanded this functionality to home policies, and to business center issued transactions (different from MyPolicy). This work had a lot of issues because the scope grew enormously.
Did extremely detailed analysis of a variety of property-based policy transactions and defined the functional rules book for this work piece.
Was the first POC for all defects in Production. My dependency within the team grew a lot.
I was assigned the responsibility to backfill my scrum master whenever she was on leave. And I remember my first call with Accenture leadership. I had a very good impression on my onshore lead,
and she had been praising me a lot it seems. I remember how my senior manager started praising me as soon as I started to give my team updates. The work was not that core - I helped my team
with any blockers they had. I maintained cross-team follow ups and made sure to send out daily status reports. I backfilled Tanvi when she went on maternity leave.
Purpose: Enable customers to download insurance documents on their own through the client’s self-service application. Again, was the solo requirements analyst. Worked with Manish (the same
BA as before) to define business and systems requirements. But since this work was mostly about services (technical), I was again the POC. Here there were a lot of teams. One for getting customer
information (TMS Team - Travelers Management Systems), one for getting billing information (Billing Team), one for creating the document (Document Creation Service Team), one for registering
transactions on business centre (Contact Management Team), one for storing documents on an online repository (FileNet Team), one for updating the customer specific dashboards (Interaction
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Amazon Practice Interview Questions by Leadership Principle
History Team), one for sending out messages to SalesForce (eCommunications Team), and one that generated the emails (SFMC - Salesforce Management Team).I was the one driving all the
interactions - responsible for talking to all the business and design personnel from these cross-functional teams - for ensuring that these systems were properly integrated. I helped the BA in
defining business logic for eligibility. Created and maintained the rules, tested unique situations (from creating test data to analyzing the different service responses). And was the go to person for
all functional doubts. My onshore requirements delivery lead used to pull me into calls and say,” Siddharth, do you magic”. There was a time when we missed one business requirement. I was the
one who found it, while testing out a particular scenario. Immediately afterwards, I started looking for other applications that used the different views of the policy (Basically a policy can have a past
term, current term, and a future term (for pre-renewal)). This led me to another analyst, who pointed me to the billing team. I then approached the Test Data Creation Team, to analyze the
business rules for multiple terms. This was a brand-new approach for us, so I had to work with senior QA and understand it. I used to stay in the office till 2 am, creating over 50 policies for testing
different conditions. Then, I got in touch with the claims team to find a solution regarding their service calls. After slogging for over a week like this, I was able to achieve proper function. Thereby I
received the “Star Performer” Award. Later, I gave KT sessions to my QA’s - helping them create data on their own (which happened after the first release). My onshore technical lead was so
impressed with my test data logic and understanding that he wanted to make me a QA lead right there and then. It was the way I was able to quickly analyze and resolve system defects while on
call.
11. NBC – PIC Experience: Excel formulas, regression, and manual/functional testing
Reduced functional testing time by 85% for Canadian Bank; coded business rules in MS Excel and recommended data management solutions to Accenture leadership for 1000+ transactions;
recognized with fast-track promotion
Worked on the functional aspects of photo cheque transactions for NBC. Was responsible for manually testing multiple transaction options and scenarios for a financial capability. While doing so,
and my deeply analyzing business documents, I chose to automate certain rules on excel. Using excel formulas and transforming entries allowed me to get work done 85% faster! I later shared this
excel workbook with my fellow associates and my supervisor and it came handy while I had left the project too. This helped me gain a fast-track promotion as well.
I conducted 2 sessions internally, where I discussed portfolio management and took up some personal investment based topics. I was quite interested in the fundamental analysis of various publicly
traded stocks and was reading zerodha’s training books at that time.
Responsible for Vacation Tracker, Velocity Tracker, Team Scorecard and Dashboard.
Responsible for IE - Buffer Utilization
SA Profile Analysis and Hiring
Responsible for 9th Hour Accenture Activities – Volunteering activities – Missing Maps
Project Empire
Technical Business Analyst for a new data management service to help cater to a new insurance product within new-york.
Project Everest
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Amazon Practice Interview Questions by Leadership Principle
Leading the requirements for a innovation based upselling insurtech initiative to supply premium discounts of adoption of smart gadgets - Smoke Alarms, Water Sensors,
and Burglar Alarms.
Purpose: To supply billing and policy level details to GEICO. (For customers who had purchased Travelers Policy through GEICO)
First Project; brand new team -everyone had very little experience; only SA (systems analyst/ requirements analyst); steep learning curve; lead SA was onshore; the Business
Analyst was also quite new. Eventually I had to take up BA responsibilities as well.
Got called out right from the start. Designer was very moody. Lots of changes came in the basic requirements.
Spent 10-12 hours on a daily basis; learnt things by talking with onshore and offshore people; prepared dated documents to keep track of all the changes.
Teams got changed - the “tech lead” got replaced. There was a bit of restructuring.
Once the designer just got frustrated, and told that he would not go forth; Conducted a meeting with his boss and my project manager in the next 10 min. Took the entire
call solo, and somehow convinced them to follow my idea - of how to split the work…. This made a very good impression in the end.
The senior architect then became a VP in Travelers, and knew me by first name basis. When he was visiting India, I was asked, by my manager, to showcase the success
stories.
Overall, the feature went successfully, without any such delays.
Later, a few enhancements also came, and I made the POC for this application. UI/UX Data components were implemented, and we increased the scope of this application
to include payment related details also.
Had to step up once to the lead architects and business owners during an implementation discussion - the message that we were sending to geico was a bit inaccurate. They
were in a hurry, but I had to make them understand the complexity and had to ask for more time. I was the go to person for all business and designers.
Eventually, we were able to close this error, and saved almost 3 months of delay in terms of release.
Agile Adaptation Issue
Purpose: Allow Customers to view their Boat / Yacht policy details on UI. Improve the UI/UX design of Auto Policy Inquiry.
By this time, I have one direct associate with me. I am training one more. And there are two other QA’s that I can also give work to. I am to collaborate with a partner team
(Mobile App Team) and work with a new data management system. The challenge is that this new system is also getting changed parallely. So, we must make sure all the
daa mappings and logic make sense with the system response data structure.
We study the UI design and product specific business rules. Then, work with our app designer to create the prospective request and response structures for our yet to be
developed service. This will be an experience-API service call which will take a few parameters such as policy number and effective date within its request, and will return all
the data elements required to fill up the UI.
Promotion Stunts:
Ever since my GMAT got over, I knew I had to work on getting promoted. Actually, I recently got promoted in November - but I believe that was long due anyways. The
appraisal decisions are made in August. So, I knew I had to structure a plan for the next 5 months.
I started by getting in touch with my Manager and my Supervisor.
My Supervisor told me about the general activities that a team leader should ideally be doing - mentoring associates, tracking different accenture level initiatives and work
products, maintaining the work process, and getting upskilled.
I discussed the same with my manager, and after a few chats my plan was ready.
I chose to pursue a certification course in Python, to volunteer within accenture - CSR initiative, and to train associates across my domain.
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Amazon Practice Interview Questions by Leadership Principle
My Python course went smoothly.
I volunteered as a career mentor for a UK based CSR Partner called Talent Tap. There I helped 2 UK students get started with their career plan. I helped them with the
general basics - networking and further education opportunities.
And I organized a 4 month (bi-weekly) - Personal Insurance based Knowledge Transfer sessions. There were participants from 3 different teams (6 analysts in number). I
assorted the KT topics amongst us, based on the work we individually do, and maintained all the documentations. We covered all the functional topics relevant in our
domain - amongst our teams. This was done with the intention that if anyone of us is on vacation/ unplanned leave, someone else can fill in their shoes.
On top of that, I am still learning more skills - pursuing a scrum master certificate and working on organizing a project level virtual volunteering event later this month.
All these efforts did help in one thing - in combination with my delivery record: this to me getting recognized with the ACE (Accenture Celebrates Excellence) award.
On top of that, my manager has nominated me for a promotion as well.
Initially, when I started work on Billing Inquiry, my BA was also very new. I had no idea how to help her and would actually end up working on business requirements on my
own. It felt manageable that time.
But while working on Policy Cancel, I faced a lot of issues in parallel regarding other applications. And since Priya and Asher were relatively new, I was not comfortable with
sharing responsibilities.
However, this didn’t help. I was overworked, and at the same time the work Asher did have a lot of gaps.
I only had to manage these gaps later, when I came to team Olympians.
That time, I understood that on one hand I couldn’t be present everywhere, but on the other hand I was not supposed to be doing all the work.
Thus, next time, I discussed with Shuchika to get Ankita to be independent first.
We started with proper email conversations - I started by making her write proper, detailed emails regarding what all analysis she had done. Then I would review it and
make sure that she follows up.
At first Ankita faced a lot of issues, and so I used to connect with her daily for one hour.
But this time is getting shorter by the day.
During one such scenario, I was working on the Boat / Yacht data contracts. But a number of other applications had work coming up.
There was work for the refund amount logic for policy cancellation - analysis was needed to understand the derivation of refund amount in case a customer had a pre-
renewed policy term. Then there was also work for AAME - where most of the messages were not getting delivered to the user. And in boat and yacht, we needed a user
profile service contract in addition to the general contracts.
Meanwhile, I was already working on the multiple policy cancellation and Evidence of insurance-based production errors. And on the agent-based enhancements in auto
flow.
Taking up all this work would’ve been cruel. Here, my prior experience with Priya helped. I was able to distribute the work properly with Ankita and maintain the process.
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