Interview at Amazon for Data Scientist Role -- how to prepare?
Phone Interview: Senior Applied Scientist @ Amazon
Amazon DS interview final loop
Amazon AS interviews starting in 2 weeks
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Hi there,
next week I'll have my first interview for the position. It's a phone interview with a Senior Applied Scientist.
I've heard that especially Amazon is very particular about their behavioral questions. How can I prepare for it? Do I have to follow strictly their principles like "customer obsession" etc. a? Are there any good ressources for it?
It's my first interview for that position. Should I expect mostly:
a casual walk through my CV and recent projects?
coding/leetcode styled questions or hands on coding (data cleaning, modeling etc.)?
I really don't know what to expect/what to focus on. Would you share your experiences? I would assume that a Senior Applied Scientist would not care too much about the behavioral stuff and focus more on the technical details, but I could be totally wrong.
Edit: It was purely technical.
I am currently a Lead Data Scientist at a large defense contractor, primarily applying data science solutions to business-facing homerooms. Think supply chain, business management, etc.
A few highlights about me...
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Very strong SQL skills, and I have done a large amount of data ETL
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Moderately strong Python skills
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Top 1% on Stack Overflow (I answer a lot of SQL and Python questions, also ask some)
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Nearly 10 internal Trade Secrets awarded to products I have built
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B.S. in Information Technology, I am graduating in August with my M.S. in Computer Science w/ an AI concentration from Hopkins
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About 3.5 years of work experience out of undergrad, two internships at Defense contractors before that
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Also have security related certifications (Security+)
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I mentor both the cybersecurity and AI clubs for my high school (along with a few other alumni)
I was contacted on LinkedIn by a recruiter. I have never really had an intention of working at FAANG organizations. From what I have read both on Reddit and elsewhere, the "work 7 days a week" and high pressure culture doesn't fit what I am really looking for. However, the recruiter mentioned almost 60% more than I make now, so that was enticing.
I feel technically sound -- but I definitely don't know how succinctly I could give an answer to some technical questions. I've looked at:
https://towardsdatascience.com/the-amazon-data-scientist-interview-93ba7195e4c9
https://towardsdatascience.com/amazon-data-scientist-interview-practice-problems-15b9b86e86c6
https://www.reddit.com/r/datascience/comments/dn5uxq/amazon_data_scienceml_interview_questions/
Are these good resources? Should I be prepared to write an algorithm from scratch? Would it be easier things, like kmeans, or am I expected to code backprop from scratch? I've done these things from scratch before, but I used reference material... I am nervous about not being able to demonstrate my skills because of being too focused on providing these overly technical answers.
Any advice is appreciated!
Edit: Wow! This blew up. I certainly was not expecting this much feedback, and certainly not so much kindness. As a somewhat new graduate ( < 5 years) who is still figuring out their own self confidence, getting to share a little bit of my background and my fears moving forward with you all has been cathartic, not to mention the sheer volume of incredibly useful feedback I have gotten. I am going to think some thing through tomorrow, and I'll be sure to update this post. If I go along with the interview, which I think i will based on this feedback, ill be sure to create an update post to let you all know what happened!