This was my negative interview experience.
I was contacted by a recruiter on LinkedIn to apply for Amazon, I took the chances and sent him my CV. One week later, no response, not even a "I confirmed I received type of reply". Tried to ask for news, no response as well.
Strange? Yes, but not surprised. Since I don't like to be ignored, I decided to submit my CV directly to the AWS Careers platform.
After two days, I received the usual email, "Hey, thanks for applying... Now you need to do this... on the following interview stages". Now this is when I started to notice something was WRONG. First, they missed my name. No, not a typo. They completely switched my name for some other applicant... I except some professionalism from Amazon but... Ok, errors can happen.
The first stage was the coding assessment, I practiced for a few days (you have one week to do it) and went for it. The assessment had two coding questions, an easy and medium one. Unfortunately, I was pretty nervous, at the point of not being able to have proper reasoning. I submitted the first question, but couldn't finish the second in time. After the coding, you have 15 mins to explain your approach on each of the questions. While I was explaining my approach to the second (which I couldn't finish), the test suddenly disconnected. After waiting 2 mins for the website to recover, I was back at 20 seconds in the timer, and blank inputs. Conclusion? Unable to explain my approach on the most important question.
I emailed the recruiter about the situation, including my complete answer - "approach idea" on the email (which btw I just coded and confirmed was correct). On the next day, she was very helpful. Noticed my problem and attached it to the process.
Just an hour after, another email from ANOTHER recruiter! "We reviewed the resume you sent and are excited to speak with you!". Side note, after completing the challenge, they review the assessment together with the CV. So, it only means, I went through the next stage.
Not so fast. three hours after, an email from both recruiters. One saying "we won’t be moving forward with your application at this time". The other saying, "There was a scheduling issue... we have not decided to move forward with your candidacy at this time. Unfortunately I’m also not able to provide detailed feedback at this time". Back and forth?!? I'm serious considering if they actually even read the question answer I sent in the email...?
What is going on with Amazon? This was probably one of the worst interview experiences I had. It's an accumulation of mistakes that only jeopardizes the company image. It's not my fault that they get a lot of applications. We, applicants, deserve proper attention.