Updated April 2026 · 16 min read · Technology · 1.5M+ employees worldwide
| Company | Amazon.com, Inc. |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | Seattle, USA |
| Key divisions | AWS, Retail, Operations, Consumer, Devices, Advertising |
| Assessment types | Work Style Assessment, Work Sample Simulation, SHL Numerical/Verbal, technical coding |
| Core framework | 16 Leadership Principles — the foundation of EVERY Amazon assessment |
| Key insight | 50-80% of candidates are rejected at the assessment stage |
Amazon's assessment process is uniquely built around its 16 Leadership Principles. Unlike other employers that use generic cognitive tests, Amazon's assessments specifically evaluate whether your work style, decision-making, and behaviour align with how Amazon operates. Understanding these principles is not optional — it's the single most important preparation step.
Stage 1: Online application. Submit via amazon.jobs. Standard details plus role-specific screening questions.
Stage 2: Amazon Work Style Assessment (~15 minutes). Amazon's custom personality test, sent to nearly every applicant. You rate statements about workplace preferences on a scale — critically, the neutral option ("Neither Agree Nor Disagree") has been removed, forcing a directional answer on every question. Your responses are measured against the 16 Leadership Principles. Key principles to understand: Customer Obsession (not just focus — obsession), Ownership (think long-term, act on behalf of the company), Bias for Action (calculated risk-taking over analysis paralysis), and Earn Trust (self-critical, listen attentively). Consistency checks: some questions appear twice with slight variations to detect contradictions.
Stage 3: Work Sample Simulation (20-60 minutes). A virtual task simulation relevant to your specific role. You'll receive emails and instant messages from a virtual team lead and team members, presenting workplace scenarios that require prioritisation, multitasking, and data-driven decision-making. Scenarios are presented with charts, graphs, spreadsheets, and tables. Every decision should reflect the Leadership Principles. This assessment measures how you work under pressure, handle competing priorities, and resolve customer issues.
Stage 4: SHL cognitive tests (some roles). Amazon uses SHL numerical reasoning (10 questions in 18 minutes, interactive format with charts and data) and verbal reasoning for roles requiring analytical skills. The SHL tests evaluate data interpretation, percentage calculations, and reading comprehension.
Stage 5: Interviews. Telephone or virtual interview (45-60 minutes) with behavioural questions rooted in Leadership Principles. Use the STAR method (Situation, Task, Action, Result). For final rounds, expect 5-7 back-to-back interviews including a "Bar Raiser" — an interviewer from an unrelated department who provides an objective assessment of your suitability.
1. Customer Obsession: Start with the customer and work backwards. In the Work Style Assessment, statements about prioritising internal stakeholders over external customer outcomes will be scored negatively. Pick "Strongly Agree" on any item where customer impact is the deciding factor.
2. Ownership: Think long-term, act on behalf of the entire company. Watch for items contrasting "fix what's in my remit" vs "fix the root cause even if it crosses team boundaries" — Amazon wants the second answer.
3. Invent and Simplify: Expect and accept that the "Not Invented Here" syndrome is wrong. Work Sample scenarios often hide a simpler solution behind a more elaborate one; Amazon scores the elegant choice higher than the thorough-looking one.
4. Are Right, A Lot: Strong judgement, seek diverse perspectives, work to disconfirm your own beliefs. In interview behavioural questions: examples where you actively sought out a viewpoint that challenged your initial assumption score highest.
5. Learn and Be Curious: Always be learning, seek to improve. Have one story ready about a deliberate skill investment you made without it being asked of you.
6. Hire and Develop the Best: Raise the performance bar with every hire and promotion. Critical if you're applying for a manager or senior role — expect direct questions about coaching others and making hiring trade-offs.
7. Insist on the Highest Standards: Continually raise the bar; deliver high-quality outputs. Be ready with a story where you rejected "good enough" work — yours or someone else's — and what the consequences were.
8. Think Big: Create and communicate a bold direction that inspires results. Work Sample scenarios often offer a "safe incremental option" vs "ambitious option with stretch targets" — Amazon scores the ambitious one if justified by data.
9. Bias for Action: Speed matters. Many decisions and actions are reversible and don't need extensive study. Statements asking whether you'd "wait for full data" vs "act with 70% confidence" — Amazon prefers the 70% answer.
10. Frugality: Accomplish more with less. Constraints breed resourcefulness, self-sufficiency, and invention. Stories about achieving a goal with limited budget, headcount, or time score well — but only if you can articulate the trade-offs you made.
11. Earn Trust: Listen attentively, speak candidly, treat others respectfully, vocally self-critical. The single most-tested principle. In interviews you'll be asked "tell me about a time you made a mistake" — the strongest answers include what you said publicly, not just what you fixed privately.
12. Dive Deep: Operate at all levels, stay connected to the details, audit frequently, be sceptical when metrics and anecdotes differ. In Work Sample, scenarios where you must reconcile a dashboard with conflicting on-the-ground data — choose the path that investigates the discrepancy before deciding.
13. Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit: Respectfully challenge decisions when you disagree, even when uncomfortable; once a decision is made, fully commit. Stories must show both halves — the challenging and the committing. Stopping the story at "I disagreed" without the "I then executed" is the most common failure mode.
14. Deliver Results: Focus on the key inputs and deliver them with the right quality and in a timely fashion. Vague "we made an impact" stories score lower than specific numerical outcomes. Always include the metric: "increased X by Y%", "delivered in N weeks vs target of M".
15. Strive to be Earth's Best Employer: Work every day to create a safer, more productive, higher-performing, more diverse, and more just work environment. Added in 2021. Examples involving inclusion, mentorship of under-represented colleagues, or improving working conditions resonate here.
16. Success and Scale Bring Broad Responsibility: Started in a garage, now Earth-affecting — humble, thoughtful, self-critical at the scale of our impact. Added in 2021. Be ready to discuss the second-order effects of decisions you've made, especially ones that affected people beyond your immediate team.
Each behavioural interview question targets one or two Leadership Principles, but a strong story usually demonstrates three or four at once. Build a portfolio of 8-10 stories covering different career situations, then map each story to the principles it illustrates. In the interview, you choose the story that best fits the question being asked.
Use the STAR structure with Amazon-specific emphasis:
Stories that travel across principles:
Avoid stories where you were the obvious hero from the start — they signal weak self-awareness. The strongest stories show a moment of being wrong, recognising it, and recovering. That demonstrates four principles at once: Earn Trust (self-critical), Learn and Be Curious (lesson extracted), Are Right A Lot (eventual outcome correct), and Bias for Action (recovered without delay).
Amazon's interview process is bar-raised and runs 4–8 weeks. It's interview-heavy rather than test-heavy compared to Big 4 or banking.
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Providers Amazon commonly uses during their aptitude and assessment stages.