1. Tell me about a time when you failed?

The time when I failed. I would like to speak about...

- (Situation) My attempt to make a startup. I wanted to create something for long time. Many ideas were on my mind. When epidemic came it was excellent opportunity to make a startup focusing on solving social problems.
- (Task) I picked topic that interest me the most, that is an app connecting people with similar interests. The first phase was learning. Then came the design and implementation.
- (Action) At first, I tried to include all good ideas into this app. Three months later, I was facing a broad and redundant monster. So I gave that up.
- (Result) I have analyzed mistakes, and planned again. Final plan was to make app that would let people or comapnies organize and join events. This time my focus was on necessity and minimalism.
- (Action) It was going fine; most of the front-end was ready after the next two months. To go further I had to get some funding. Implementation was casted aside. I have teamed up with one colleague, and focus was put on preparing documents for funding, that included business plan, presentations, and video.
- (Result) I did not get funding. Life responsibilities required me to go back to normal life and find job.
- (Conclusion) From this expiriences I have learned few things. First were new technologies and getting more proficiency in them, as beside startup, they can give me better job. Other thing is that saying "just do it" is not enough. Emphasis should be put on diligent planning, simplicity, reducing redundancy in design, analysis and using right tech in right place. Last thing is that team is needed.

2. What's your weakness?

- (Situation) - We had this problem with software manipulation during deployment of clusters. Both clients and developers complained that its super slow.
- (Task) - Even if more important task was ongoing (ie. rolling update had broken locks) I put some extra time on that target. Simple analysis of existing implementation resulted in expotential time complexity.
- (Action) - Relations beetwen software used for deployment (with multiple versions) required me to introduce forest structure to manage it. Unfortunately as next improvement I have added threading (python GIL is rather safe) that came with negative feedback.
- (Result) - Issue with complexity was fixed and for full system deploment it reduced needed time to 3-5[min] from 15[min]. But I have overdone with threading to make it finish in 1-2[min] by cost of code complexity.

- (Situation) - I need to spend a lot of time on planning and analysis. Self-discipline and organization keeps me in harmony. Having new information and experience, I tend to change my mind a lot. ??? New information changed your mind, what does it mean ??

I am not good at memorize things that is not well structured. But the years exploring myself, I found many efficient ways to assist myself. I accumulate some experience and tools that apply different situations. I have my own blogs recording best known methods to many technique issues, notes of all online courses, I also use draw.io to draw architecture to each difficult analyzing task I met during the work, so until now, I master well what I have dealt with. They are not just issues I solved, they have become part of my experience.

3. A time you where 75% through a project and had to pivot strategy

4. A time when you missed an obvious solution to a problem

5. A time when you had to apologize to someone?

Anwserwing by setting up a meeting is better seen as when using email. Example should be genuine, recent, max 1-2min.

# Guide

---
title: Behavioral Questions
date: 2020-11-01
---

# What to say?

- Tell them what they want to hear!
- When they ask about failures, they want to know how You grow from that.
- Tell me about two problems that eventually leads to third problem. They ask that as they want to see Your ability to analise such situation.
- Situation with negative impact from menager. How did You earn their trust. How did You eventually build confidence.

They give questions to prepare to them beforehand. They are designed in such a way that any one has anwser for them.

Challenge here is to actually deliver great anwser. How?

Start talking about hypothetical situation and how would you deal with it.

Example, challenge in meeting deadline.

- I would communicate with all relevant stakeholders of the project. Then I would go above and beyond to diagnose and understand the issue. Eventually I would consult with other members to see what can be done.
- The best example was when I was working...

# What to Avoid?

- Do not blame others.
- Be sincere: show the best parts of yourself without sugar-coating, be genuine.
- Negativism: short and concise answers without too long sentences. Describe failure by one sentence for the task, one for the actual failure part, max 3 for the result.
- Take principles seriously.

# How?

Use SBI: situation, behavior, impact.

- What was the situation, what was team trying to achieve?
- Behavior, what was your plan of action?
- Impact, what was measurable outcome?

# Examples

- Tell me about a time when you were faced with a problem that had a number of possible solutions. What was the problem and how did you determine the course of action? What was the outcome of that choice?

- When have you ever taken a risk, made a mistake or failed? How did you respond and how did you learn from that experience?
- Describe a time when you took the lead on a project
- What did you do when you needed to motivate a group of individuals or encourage collaboration during a particular project?
- How have you leveraged data to develop a strategy?

> Keep in mind, Amazon is a data-driven company. When you answer questions, you should focus on the question asked, ensure your answer is well-structured and provide examples using metrics or data if applicable. Refer to recent situations whenever possible.

# Most Difficult 5 Questions

1. Tell me about a time when you failed?

All my life is build on top of failures. In highschool my body and mind was failing. I was failing a lot of exams in university. Then trying to settle down in Sweden was failure. I failed with making startup, first with too big idea, then with deadline of time I had to get job. Last failure was with inability to accept Windows in my life.

2. What’s your weakness?

3. A time you where 75% through a project and had to pivot strategy

4. A time when you missed an obvious solution to a problem

5. A time when you had to apologize to someone?

Anwserwing by setting up a meeting is better seen as when using email. Example should be genuine, recent, max 1-2min.

# Most Asked 24 Questions

## Bias for action

1. Tell me about a time you had to quickly adjust your work priorities to meet changing demands.

> Speed matters in business. Many decisions and actions are reversible and do not need extensive study. We value calculating and risk taking.


## Teamwork / Interpersonal Skills

2. What did you do when you needed to motivate a group of individuals?

3. Give me an example of a time you faced a conflict while working on a team. How did you handle that?

4. The last time you had to apologize to someone

5. Describe a long-term project that you managed. How did you keep everything moving along in a timely manner?

6. Describe a situation when you negotiated with others in your organization to reach an agreement.

## Earn Trust

7. Tell me about a time when you received negative feedback from your manager. How did you respond?

## Problem Solving

8. Tell me about a time when you missed an obvious solution to a problem

9. A time when you faced a problem that had multiple possible solutions

## Strategy / Decision Making

10. Tell me about a time when you were 75% through a project, & you had to pivot strategy

11. Tell me about a time you had to deal with ambiguity

12. Tell me about the toughest decision you've had to make in the past six months

## Learn and be curious

13. What’s the most innovative new idea that you have implemented?

## Ownership

14. Tell me about a time you stepped up into a leadership role
15. Describe a time when you sacrificed short term goals for long term success
16. Tell me about a time when you had to push back to HQ or challenged a decision

## Ownership

17. We all deal with difficult customers from time to time. Tell me about a challenging client-facing situation and how you handled it.

## Failure

18. Tell me about a time when you were not able to meet a time commitment. What prevented you from meeting it? What was the outcome and what did you learn from it?
19. Tell me about a time you failed and what you learned from it

## General

20. What's your strength / weakness
21. Tell me about yourself

22. Why Amazon?

Research group applied for. How are your skills adding value to the role?

# Anwsers