Leaders focus on the key inputs for their business and deliver them with the right quality and in a timely fashion. Despite setbacks, they rise to the occasion and never settle.
Deliver Results is another core Amazon Leadership Principle. It is the catch-all for getting stuff done in the role. It is often used as a proxy by Amazon Interviewers for “how strong we expect the person to be”, and in the actual day-to-day role it’s used to understand and stack rank people. It’s one of the most important principles at Amazon (which is true of all of the Leadership Principles, but especially Deliver Results).
When you’re asked by the Amazon interviewer about Deliver Results, they’re normally asking you to talk about the execution and delivery of projects, big or small. They want to understand if you were able to focus on the most important tasks, and if you were able to adapt to different challenges to actually get stuff done. You’ll do well by explicitly talking about the challenges you faced and how you overcame them.
If you’re looking for a manager role rather than an individual contributor role, you’ll also want to focus on enabling your team to deliver results in a changing environment, especially the roadblocks you specifically were able to remove for your team to allow them to be successful.
It’s important to consider that the results you’re talking about delivering have to have a certain scale to them to get the interviewer to be interested. If you’re talking about delivering a small project, for example at university, you’ll want to make sure that the interviewer understands the impact on your university colleagues, and on the wider community, not just yourself.
Always consider the question “why should the Amazon interviewer care about the results you’ve delivered” – this will mean that you focus on the impact and the numbers. There are times to be humble and modest in the Amazon interview, but when you’re talking about Deliver Results, you need to be explicit about the value that you personally delivered. If you say “we” too often, referring to the team, you should expect to be pushed on what specifically “you” did. This is sometimes hard to get over, especially if you’re a team player or index highly on Earn Trust, but it’s important the interviewer comes away thinking “This person was deeply involved in delivering these results.”
It’s also always excellent interview practice to pre-empt the question “What would you have done differently” in your answers. This will allow you to still be humble about your process and actions, and lets you be self-reflective without being prompted. Obviously don’t make something up if you wouldn’t have done anything differently, but this is very rarely going to be the case.
Example Deliver Results Questions
Tell me about a goal that you set that took a long time to achieve or that you are still working towards. How do you keep focused on the goal given the other priorities you have?
Give me an example of a time when you were able to deliver an important project under a tight deadline. What sacrifices did you have to make to meet the deadline? How did they impact the final deliverables?
Tell me about a time where you not only met a goal but considerably exceeded expectations. How were you able to do it? What challenges did you have to overcome?
Example Deliver Results Questions for Managers
Give an example of a mission or goal you didn’t think was achievable. What was it and how did you help your team try to achieve it. Were you successful in the end?
How do you ensure you are focusing on the right deliverables when you have several competing priorities? Tell me about a time when you did not effectively manage your projects and something fell through the cracks.
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