How I cracked my Amazon Coding Interview | Software Development Engineer Interview | Sprint Master

hey everyone my name is ram and welcome to sprint master back in 2019 one fine day i received an email from amazon recruiter asking if i'm interested in a position with amazon or not initially i was a little hesitant because back in 2015 i had been to an amazon interview which wasn't a successful one i know how much dedication i need to put in these interviews so i took a couple of days to think about it and finally i said i am interested in the position starting from that day it took a little over a month to complete the online assessment to the on-site interview part and finally i got a job with amazon today i'm going to share with you how i prepared for this amazon interview which landed a job for me with amazon before we go into that i want to make it clear that the content of this video is based on my experience and my preparation and it is not a word of amazon with that being said let's get into our topic three two one to give you a little bit of background about myself i'm a computer science major and i completed my masters in 2015 december since i'm a computer science major it is my dream to work for big tech companies like google and amazon and i got this opportunity in 2015 but i wasn't prepared at that time and i lost that opportunity and in 2019 again i got this opportunity and this time i want to give my best at this interview and i finally i did it and i cracked my amazon interview i received the initial email from the recruiter on april 5th and after a little back and forth conversation i scheduled my online assessment on april 20th after i cracked my online assessment i had scheduled my phone interview on april 38 and then finally on-site interview on may 14th so i have a little bit over a month period from april 5th to may 14th and today i want to share with you like how i prepared within this one month period which landed a job for me with amazon during the first week of my preparation i prepared a notes on the basic data structures like arrays linked lists assets stack skews trees graphs and after that i prepared a notes on the searching and sorting techniques like bind research breadth first search depth research and then sorting mechanisms like insertion sortmets.quicksort after that i also prepared the notes for dynamic programming concepts and then recursion bit manipulation few techniques on solving the problems and finally last but not the least the time complexity time complexity is an essential thing for any coding interview so i made sure i prepared notes on the time complexity and i made made up my mind to look at the time complexity of each and every algorithm i work on so during this one month period i had to take on three tests the first is online assessment the second one is phone screen and then finally on-site loop so for the first online assessment what i did was i solved the problems on the topcoder.com and the codechef.com to prepare myself for these online assessment tests these sites have the problems which closely resemble to the online assessment questions so this helped me to crack my online assessment later on the next challenge was my phone screen interview for the phone screen interview i had around 10 days after the online assessment and during this phase i used to solve the problems from the book tracking the coding interview by gail lachmann mcdowell if you have never heard about this book i highly suggest you purchase this book first because this book has a lot to offer this book gives you a introduction on how these interviews are conducted to begin with and then how you must prepare for these interviews and it also gives you the list of the topics that you need to prepare for this interview i'm not promoting this book in any way but i just want to let you know that this is one of the resources which best helped me track this interview so every day during this 10 days i used to pick up a problem from this book and solve it on the paper and analyze the time complexity of the approach and finally check the solution in the book most of the times there is a better solution than my approach in the book and this helped me to get a broader look on ways to solve the problems few takeaways for me during this interview preparation the first thing is i used to write a lot of redundant code this interview preparation helped me to modularize my code and reuse the code and the second thing is i used to miss edge cases a lot of edge cases actually so this preparation helped me to construct edge cases always and the finally the third thing is most of the times i overthink the problem and complicate the logic and on the way to solving the problem i completely lose track of the objective so i learned how to break down the problem into multiple parts and solve one piece at a time this helped me to crack my phone screen interview after my phone screen i had around couple of weeks to prepare for my onset interview during this phase i just doubled down on what i have done for the phone screen interview this time i purchased a whiteboard and started solving the problems on the whiteboard and talked through the code my wife helped me during this process as an interviewer to take on mock interviews for me and i try to talk through the logic with her if you can find someone like this to help you with the process that's great if not just pretend there is someone and start talking the logic and record that video and watch it at a later time that way you can understand how the interviewer is feeling when you are explaining the logic if you are still unsure there are plenty of websites which can take mock interviews for you and you can reach out to them as well few takeaways for me during this onset preparation the first thing is as soon as you hear the question first try to understand the question you can understand the question properly by asking clarifying questions to your interviewer and after that don't hesitate to talk even the lamest solution that comes up to your mind when you hear the question and the third one is explain your choice of data structures if you are picking some data structures for your problem explain why you are picking that and understand what is the time complexity of that data structure and finally make a good use of whiteboard because you may run out of space finally the day before my onsite interview i rebreast all my data structures and the basic searching and sorting algorithms again and gave my best shot at these interviews so far we have talked about only the coding piece of the amazon interview but there are a couple of other essential pieces for cracking an amazon interview the first thing is behavioral questions and the second one is system design usually if your amazon interview is for 45 minutes 15 minutes is dedicated to these behavioral questions these behavioral questions are designed around the amazon 14 leadership principles you can find these leadership principles on the amazon website itself to prepare for these behavioral questions what i did was i looked at my previous job and gathered examples from my past experience which can closely resemble to these leadership principles and made a note of that this helped me during the interview process to immediately jump into an answer instead of digging through my memory to gather some examples which can showcase that leadership principle system design itself is a broader topic and the way i prepared for the system design questions is similar to that of a coding interview so i used to pick up a question at random and solve it on the whiteboard asking clarifying questions and coming up with a bigger scope of the problem as much as possible and talk through the solution to the interviewer during this one month period i was really exhausted and i used to feel like i don't want to do it anymore and but i kept myself up and i kept the motivation coming to me and finally after my on-site interview i felt so relaxed and when i got the job offer i felt that the struggle for this one month was totally worth it and today i'm happy to be an amazonian i hope this video helps you in your amazon interview preparation and if it does please click the like button below and share this video with your friends and make sure you subscribe to sprint master channel to get notified of our new videos and if you have any questions in the amazon interview preparation make sure you mention them in the comment section below and as always thanks for watching this video this is ram signing off

Channel: Sprint Master

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Keywords: amazon interview preparation, amazon coding interview, cracking the coding interview, grokking a coding interview, interview questions, interview preparation, coding interview tips, interview tips, amazon interview process, programming interview, how to crack a coding interview, grokking the coding interview, coding interview, how to prepare for amazon coding interview, how to prepare for coding interviews

Id: f9YFXYonPQQ

Length: 8min 12sec (492 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 08 2021