Amazon Interview Rating Scale: From Strength to Concern
Amazon interviewers score you twice: once on each Leadership Principle they were assigned, and once with a single overall vote. The company does not publish either scale, so what follows is what candidates and interviewers widely report.
For each Leadership Principle, the reported wording runs from Strength down to Concern. For the overall call, the reported wording runs from Strong Hire down to Strong No Hire.
There is no number score and no percentage. Amazon runs on written evidence, not points.
The Leadership Principle Rating Words
Every interviewer is assigned two or three of Amazon's 16 Leadership Principles. They ask behavioral questions about those values only. Then they rate what they heard.
| Rating | What it usually means |
|---|---|
| Strength | Clear, specific evidence at or above the level you are hired for |
| Mild Strength | Good evidence, but thin on scope, data or your own role |
| Mixed | Some positive evidence and some negative evidence in the same story |
| Mild Concern | Evidence points the wrong way, but it is not severe |
| Concern | Clear evidence against the value, such as blaming others for a failure |
A Mixed rating is not a rejection. Candidates report that one Mixed on a minor value can still end in an offer.
A Concern is much heavier. It usually needs a Strength from another interviewer on the same value to survive the debrief.
The Overall Hire Vote
Separately, each interviewer gives one overall recommendation. Candidates report these four words.
| Vote | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Strong Hire | Clearly above the bar for the level |
| Inclined Hire | Above the bar, with some gaps |
| Inclined No Hire | Below the bar, but close |
| Strong No Hire | Clearly below the bar |
The vote covers the whole interview, not one question. A candidate can solve the coding question and still get Inclined No Hire on weak Leadership Principle answers.
What Gets Rated in a Technical Round
A coding round is still scored against Leadership Principles. The coding itself is scored on four things that candidates report again and again.
The first is whether your solution is correct. It must handle the edge cases you were told about.
The second is time and space cost. You should state the complexity without being asked.
The third is code quality. Clear names, small functions and no dead code.
The fourth is communication. You should talk through the approach before writing it.
A system design round adds scale, data storage choices and failure handling. See the top system design questions for Amazon for the usual question set.
The Debrief Meeting
After the loop, every interviewer meets. This meeting is called the debrief.
Each person writes their feedback before the meeting and before hearing anyone else. That rule exists to stop one loud opinion from shaping the room.
The Bar Raiser leads the discussion. This is a trained interviewer from a different team. The Bar Raiser can block a hire that the hiring manager wants.
The group looks for patterns across interviewers. Two people reporting Concern on the same value is a strong negative signal. Two people reporting Strength on different values is weaker than it sounds.
How to Raise Your Rating
Give one story per answer, not a summary of your career. Name the problem, your action and the measured result.
Use the STAR format, which means Situation, Task, Action and Result. Keep Situation short and spend most of your words on Action.
Say "I" rather than "we". Interviewers must record what you personally did. Team language is the most common cause of a Mild Strength instead of a Strength.
How to Prepare
- Write 10 to 12 stories with numbers. Each one should map to two or three Leadership Principles. Start from the top behavioral questions for Amazon.
- Prepare one failure story properly. Amazon asks about mistakes often. Own the mistake and state what you changed afterwards.
- Drill coding patterns until they are automatic. Grokking the Coding Interview organises problems by the pattern behind them.
- Practice narrating while you code. Silence during a coding round lowers the communication score.
- Know the whole loop before you sit it. Read the Amazon interview process and the Amazon interview guide.
- Get scored by someone else first. Mock interviews with experienced engineers surface the gaps you cannot see.
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