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Interview Advice: How To Answer Interview Questions About The Amazon Leadership Principle "Think Big"

The document provides advice on how to answer interview questions related to Amazon's leadership principle of "Think Big." It begins by explaining the principle, which means being ambitious and setting no limits on thinking and goals. It then provides examples of questions an interviewer may ask related to this principle, such as giving an example of a time you took a calculated risk or delivered beyond the scope of a project. The document advises having multiple examples prepared to draw from in case asked multiple questions. Finally, it gives examples of answers candidates could provide for two sample questions, including a time one candidate hosted a failed database in an unconventional environment, and how a VP sets ambitious goals for their team.

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Sanjeev Aggarwal
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100% found this document useful (1 vote)
361 views8 pages

Interview Advice: How To Answer Interview Questions About The Amazon Leadership Principle "Think Big"

The document provides advice on how to answer interview questions related to Amazon's leadership principle of "Think Big." It begins by explaining the principle, which means being ambitious and setting no limits on thinking and goals. It then provides examples of questions an interviewer may ask related to this principle, such as giving an example of a time you took a calculated risk or delivered beyond the scope of a project. The document advises having multiple examples prepared to draw from in case asked multiple questions. Finally, it gives examples of answers candidates could provide for two sample questions, including a time one candidate hosted a failed database in an unconventional environment, and how a VP sets ambitious goals for their team.

Uploaded by

Sanjeev Aggarwal
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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8/3/2021 How to answer interview questions about the Amazon leadership principle "Think Big" — Interview Genie

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The eighth Amazon Leadership Principle is “Think Big.”


If you’re preparing for an interview at Amazon, you
should ask yourself what Amazon means by “think big”
and how this particular leadership principle applies to Blog Categories
your role at the company.
Amazon interviews
If you don’t know about the Amazon leadership
principles, consider first reading this article about Behavioral questions
interviewing at Amazon. 
ESL candidates

How Amazon explains the “Think Interview basics


Big” leadership principle
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8/3/2021 How to answer interview questions about the Amazon leadership principle "Think Big" — Interview Genie

Thinking small is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Questions and answers


Leaders create and communicate a bold
direction that inspires results. They think
differently and look around corners for ways to
serve customers.

CONTACT
What does the “Think Big” ME
leadership principle mean?  
The term “to think big” means to be ambitious or to
set no limits on your thinking and goals. Other
expressions you might have heard that mean the
same thing are “to go large” or “to reach for the stars.”

If you think big you will:

• See problems as challenges and opportunities

• Be positive

• Think of things you can do, not things you can’t

• Plan what is possible, not worry about what is


impossible

• Be fearless

• Be creative

• Be able to dream and visualize what you want

Thinking big means:

• Taking a radical approach and risks when


necessary, always questioning traditional
assumptions in pursuit of the best idea.

• Creating a gutsy mission that employees can be


inspired by and get behind. Providing direction
for how to get there and explaining how
everything fits into the long-term plan.
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8/3/2021 How to answer interview questions about the Amazon leadership principle "Think Big" — Interview Genie

• Continually communicating the big picture and


mission to the team in a manner that gets
employees excited.

• Actively exploring new ideas from team


members, encouraging risk taking when
appropriate.

Interview Questions Related to


the “Think Big” Leadership
Principle
If your interviewer asks about this Amazon leadership
principle, she or he might ask one of the following
questions:

• Tell me about a time you took a calculated risk in


order to achieve a professional goal. What were
the tradeoffs? What was the outcome?

• Tell me about a time you took a big risk and it


failed. What did you learn? What would you do
differently?

• Tell me about a time you went way beyond the


scope of the project and delivered.

• Tell me about your proudest professional


achievement.

• Give me an example of a radical approach to a


problem you proposed. What was the problem
and why did you feel it required a completely
different way of thinking about it? Was your
approach successful?

• How do you drive adoption for your vision/ideas?


How do you know how well your idea or vision
has been adopted by other teams or partners?

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Give a specific example highlighting one of your


ideas.

• Tell me about time you were working on an


initiative or goal and saw an opportunity to do
something much bigger than the initial focus.

• Tell me about a time you looked at a key process


that was working well and questioned whether it
was still the right one. What assumptions were
you questioning and why? Did you end up making
a change to the process?

How many stories do I need to


prepare for this principle?
Most people say that you should have two examples
for each principle. That’s a good benchmark, but what
if you get asked four Think Big questions? Will you
have enough stories to answer them all? In the onsite
interview the interviewers will divide the principles up
and each take two or three, so in one interview you
may have more than two questions about a principle.
What will you do if that happens? I suggest that you
practice using some questions you’ve developed for
other principles to answer the Think Big questions. I
think it’s a better idea to think of having a group of
answers you can tailor for the different principles
depending on what you get asked that thinking of
preparing two answers for each principle.

How to Answer Questions


Related to the Think Big Principle
Question: Give an example of a time you
took a calculated risk.

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Answer given by a Data Architect who specializes in


building and maintaining disaster recovery systems.

On a yearly basis, Huawei works together with its


customers to perform disaster recovery drills. In this
drill, we switch over all our services from one data
center to another in a controlled fashion. A few
months ago, while we were preparing for the drill, we
met an issue that could have blocked the whole
activity. A colleague was performing a regular check
on hardware resources when we found that the
number of CPUs on a database machine disaster
recovery site was not matching the number of CPUs
on the production site.

He requested a change window, brought the machine


down, and changed the number of CPUs to match the
production site, but then the machine was not able to
start up. After a few calls with KVM experts at HQ, we
understood that the HQ experts couldn’t find the root
cause and the solution was to rebuild the disaster
recovery machine. To our surprise, we weren’t able to
reuse resources allocated to that dead virtual
machine to a new virtual machine. Fortunately, we
had another environment hosted in VMware, and we
had resources available to host a new machine. I
suggested that we host the failed disaster recovery
database in this new platform, which was considered
risky because none of the other disaster recovery
machines were running in VMware.

The customer was worried that hosting the failed


machine in the VMware environment would mean a
machine on production and the disaster recovery
databases would be hosted in a different hypervisor
environment. Their apprehension was
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8/3/2021 How to answer interview questions about the Amazon leadership principle "Think Big" — Interview Genie

understandable, since no customer/vendor would


host machines in such a way. However, I explained to
them that Oracle is agnostic about which hypervisor it
is running on. As long as the OS version, OS type, and
DB version are the same, Oracle would work without a
problem.

Therefore, going against the normal way of doing


things, I rebuilt the 6.5TB database in a VMware
environment in 20 hours. A day later we successfully
performed disaster recovery switchover and
switchback operation.

This candidate used his technical expertise for “thinking


big,” i.e., a willingness to solve a problem in an
unconventional way. His confidence in his own expertise
mitigated what others would have perceived as a “risky”
technical maneuver.   

Question: Give an example of how you


set goals.

Answer given by a VP of Digital Product Development at


Merrill Lynch.

I tend to set very ambitious goals for my team and


also myself professionally. An example of this is that,
as soon as I joined my current company, I knew I
wanted to lead an organization. I set small goals to
achieve that ultimate goal.

I needed to be the best individual contributor on my


team, and I did that by delivering the Merrill Lynch
mobile application platform for financial analysts.  I
was recognized for this and was promoted within a
year and a half of joining. I then set my sights on the

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next milestone, which was to lead multiple teams and


manage multiple apps on multiple platforms. This is
when I hired someone really strong to delegate some
of the mobile platform work under me, so that I could
oversee the creation of the desktop platform for
financial analysts.

I led the design and implementation of the Client 360


app, which was our internal flagship app. The work
required that I coordinate across seven different
teams, each one building components in isolation
before eventually integrating them into one single-
page app.

I was recognized for my leadership quality during this


effort and was promoted again in two years. Since
that time, I have managed to deliver multiple
applications, such as Client Profile, Relationship Tree,
and Sub house holding on the desktop platform, while
continuing to grow the mobile app customer base.

I am the youngest of all my peers, and they all had a


VP title before me. But because of my hard work,
dedication, and relentless pursuit of perfection, I am
being considered for my next promotion this year
before all my peers.

The candidate’s ambition really shines through in this


answer. Note how she “thinks big” and tackles the most
ambitious projects, but is always looking ahead to the
next challenge.

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Looking for more help?


Visit my Amazon
Resources page to find all
of my best interview tips
in one place.

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