The hardest part about interviewing is that there is no feedback loop; I once interviewed at 10 companies within 2 weeks and got rejected from all of them, but to this day I still don't know what part I need to improve upon.
Same. I interviewed with Amazon twice and it's like a 10-hour meat grinder. No offer either time and I have no idea what I did wrong.
I absolutely don't get those wide open questions like "How would you design 1-hour delivery?" (real question btw). As someone who has done a lot of consulting work, my instincts are never, ever try to answer such a ridiculously broad question on your own with no context. The answer to me is to budget for several weeks of planning with a broad range of stakeholders to prioritize features and come up with an initial technical approach that we can refine after an MVP launch, but I don't think that's what they wanted to hear.
>I absolutely don't get those wide open questions like "How would you design 1-hour delivery?"
Quick tip: interviewers often design that kind of question to be intentionally vague. If you get a question like that, they probably want a bunch of questions before you start on an answer. Like, "which part of the process are we designing? The software stack, interfacing with logistics companies, customer service?"
It seems frustrating, but they're looking for people who will drill down and make sure they fully understand a task before they run off to solve it. Asking for clarification is usually a good thing in an interview, especially since the interviewers don't always think the problems through completely.
The lack of feedback seems like a liability thing. A very small number of people will sue because they don't like the reason they were given, so the company decides not to give detailed feedback.
Your interviewers rarely have real world consulting experience, meeting with clients and solving real problems tied to real money. What they mean by that "1 hour delivery" is a system design question that must be answered along the standard system design template, which is completely detached from reality. You should lookup up those system design interviews on youtube, ala "design a tinyurl service".
There is no stock right or wrong answer for those kinds of questions.
You should ask questions to understand which area the interviewer wants you to concentrate on (if any). Some interviewers are happy if you choose an area where you can showcase your experience, others expect you to answer an area they have in mind. If you cover enough, with enough detail, they will be happy. Ask questions.
There is a correct answer actually, one which can be studied for. That question is a system design question, they wanted you to come up with some architecture for it, that you will know once you study system design. To do so, just search up "system design questions site:GitHub.com".
It sounds like a super fun question. I'm almost tempted to start thinking about it even though I'm not interviewing for anything.
Given how many features AWS alone ships every year, I'm sure Amazon is very familiar with prioritizing features and building MVPs. But you're interviewing for a software engineering position (I assume) and the question is explicitly about design, so project planning is off topic here. It's fine to mention it in passing, but the meat of the answer should be about the "initial technical approach" that you mention.
Your comment suggests that, due to your consulting experience, you flat out refused to draft an initial technical approach on the spot. That may be wise is other situations, but you aren't here as a consultant. Amazon isn't going to start implementing 1-hour delivery based on your plans. They're asking this question to see you think and work your way through a complex problem.
Additionally, your answer is so vague that it could apply to almost any question ("How to do X?" "Gather stakeholders and come up with an initial technical approach").
Interviewed at a FAANG last year, failed the onsite. I got called by the (internal) recruiter a few weeks ago asking if I wanted to retry, and he offered feedback he had from my previous attempt. I was shocked - both that he provided feedback, and because my own evaluation of how I did differed from the actual feedback (did better at a round I thought I bombed in). More on this later.
Interviewed at another FAANG, and got rejected there too. Here, the hiring manager immediately gave me feedback before sending me home. Again, surprising.
So are things changing in regards to giving feedback? Usually FAANG leads the charge, and other companies play copycat.
Getting back to the first FAANG, I wanted to punch myself because according to the recruiter, I might actually have been able to get in if I had asked to be considered for a lower level than what they had originally pegged me for. I would have hands down, no hesitation, jumped for joy to be brought in at a lower level. Sucked that no one told me at the time of the actual rejection.
Kind of related to the advice in the blog post, there are a couple things you can do (from an open-minded, kind, curious-and-hoping-to-learn approach and way of phrasing your questions).
- In an interview, if you feel it could have gone better, you can ask your interviewer about better solutions. I have literally done this in interviews that led to an offer - when they get to the point where you ask questions, one of yours can be "I don't feel like I got to a great solution here, can you explain what an efficient solutions would look like, or point me to a reference where I can read up on this"?
- You can ask your recruiter for feedback, or just suggestions for general areas that you can improve. More likely than not, they won't respond or will tell you the policy is not to share anything, but you've already lost out on this job, and one polite inquiry is not going to put a black mark on your record at this company.
If you aced the technical questions, then it must be the behavioral part. One big trap there is the question about conflict resolution. The naive answer "I avoid conflicts" is a mistake: according to the trendy big five personality traits system, avoiding conflicts is a sign of guess what? combative personality. You want to present yourself as a "agreeable" person. The person asking these questions is rarely a psychologist. Instead the interviewer is given a big spreadsheet with 50 or so canned questions and 5 or so columns with examples of answers and how those answers must be interpreted. Finally the interviewer crosschecks your answers with the spreadsheet and gives ratings to five personality traits. In your case, you must be said some keyword, the interviewers, who can't care less, matched that keyword with the spreadsheet and you got a bad rating. The HRs also can't care less, so they obviously don't bother to double-check the ratings (if anyone bothered to actually record your answer). Anyways, morale of the story is that behavioral questions are just like leetcode: you need to know the right answers before you start the interview.
If you get to later stages you can ask for feedback. Some give it some don’t. I had some really positive experiences with that, usually with smaller companies. Worst case you just get ghosted (hi datadog, dropbox).
This is not completely covering why they didn’t give any feedback, but something to ponder over. From the Recurse Center application process and why they don’t give feedback to rejected candidates: [1]
> People would reply and try to contest our decisions, get frustrated that our responses weren’t specific enough, or otherwise indicate that our feedback wasn’t very productive.
Depending on the company and its location, there could also be legal considerations in not giving feedback.
From time to time, I've gotten really good explanations. One was that the perfect candidate fell in their laps, and not to look at it as "I failed," but they the company got really lucky.
Another was that I did well and people liked me, but they realized they actually needed to focus on a different position. This meshed with things I learned during the interview.
Granted, these are the low-risk rejections where giving me the reason doesn't open up the company to anything legally, but it's still appreciated.
From the article:
If you think you flubbed an answer, ask during the interview for what they were looking for! Or, I've had success framing that up at the end of the interview as:
"Is there anything I didn't say today you hoped I would; anything that I said you hoped I wouldn't; anything I said that you've got questions about?"
Nothing can save you from getting ghosted, but you definitely should utilize the face time you have to ASK questions, too.
> The hardest part about interviewing is that there is no feedback loop;
I've had good results simply asking the recruiter for feedback. Typically they are able to give me some insight into the process that I wouldn't have been able to guess. In "no offer" situations, it's often "the hiring manager was looking for someone with more experience in X" or something like that. This works best over the phone, since they are apt to tell you more than they would be willing to put into writing.
For that matter, the recruiter is often an underutilized resource before the interview too. There's no rule that the nature of interview questions need be a complete surprise. The recruiter is often able to shed light on who will ask what sort of questions, which can be reassuring and narrow down what you might review before the interview.
I have given lots of interviews and only one company (bol.com) was kind enough to schedule a call and gave feedback that why exactly I am being rejected.
Everyone else, if they bother enough, only sends the standard template response.
