A recruiter contacted me. We had a phone screen where they provided information about Amazon's recruitment process, example interview questions, and specific recruitment criteria (STAR Method). A phone interview followed shortly thereafter. However, it was a full month before my Loop Interview.

Design an algorithm to pop balloons for the most money in a fictitious carnival game. The rules of the game are bizarre and aren't really even explained; you have to spend the first 5 minutes probing the interviewer just to understand what he's not telling you about the game he's asking you to design the winning strategy to.

It seemed like the interviewer struggled to present his own question.

Lots and lots of behavioral questions. Think of a time in your life where you got your way, didn't get your way, impressed a customer, or let somebody down. All of these will tie back to Amazon's Leadership Principles, so you can prepare stories ahead of time relevant to the principles and tell them during a relevant question.

Coding challenges:

• Split text without spaces into words.
• Aggregate purchase events in a service to determine "most popular items".
• Write a service that returns the best response to an Amazon Alexa question.