If you interview at Amazon, the behavioral round is the round. Amazon runs its whole hiring loop on a set of values called the Leadership Principles, and every behavioral question maps back to one or more of them. Interviewers are trained to ask about specific principles and to write up your answers against them. So knowing what they are, and having real stories ready, matters more here than at most companies.
Let me walk through them and show you how to actually use them.
What the principles are
There are 16 of them. You can find the official list on Amazon's jobs site, and you should read it in their exact words. But here's the short version of the ones that come up most:
- Customer Obsession - start from the customer and work backward.
- Ownership - act like an owner, think long term, never say "that's not my job."
- Invent and Simplify - look for new ideas and cut complexity.
- Are Right, A Lot - good judgment, and willing to seek out other views to disconfirm your own.
- Dive Deep - stay close to the details, audit often, don't get distanced from the work.
- Bias for Action - speed matters, many decisions are reversible.
- Deliver Results - hit the goal, despite setbacks.
- Earn Trust - listen, speak candidly, be self-critical.
- Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit - challenge respectfully, then commit fully once a decision is made.
The rest (Hire and Develop the Best, Insist on the Highest Standards, Think Big, Frugality, Learn and Be Curious, plus the two newer ones on being Earth's Best Employer and Success and Scale Bring Broad Responsibility) round out the set. Skim them all so nothing surprises you.
How they show up in the interview
You won't be asked "do you have Ownership?" You'll get a question like "tell me about a time you took on something outside your role" or "describe a project where you missed a deadline." The interviewer has a principle in mind, and they're listening for the behavior behind it.
A few patterns to expect:
- Most questions ask for a past situation, not a hypothetical. "Tell me about a time" not "what would you do."
- They'll dig. Expect follow-ups like "why did you make that call?" and "what would you do differently?" This is Dive Deep in action, and surface-level answers fall apart here.
- They want your specific contribution. "We" answers get probed until they find the "I." Be ready to say what you personally did.
Building your stories
Don't write a script for all 16. Write a bank of real stories instead, then map each one to the principles it can cover. One strong story usually hits two or three.
Aim for six to eight stories from your actual work. For each one, jot down:
- The situation and what was at stake.
- What you specifically did, and why you chose that over the alternatives.
- The result, with a number if you have an honest one.
- What you learned or would change.
Use STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Result) to keep your answers tight. The Action part is where you spend most of your words, because that's where your judgment shows.
Pick stories with tension. A project that went perfectly is boring and gives the interviewer nothing to probe. A project where you disagreed with someone, made a hard call, missed something and recovered, or owned a mistake - those carry the principles. Earn Trust and Have Backbone basically require a story where something went wrong.
Common mistakes
Memorizing answers word for word. It shows, and the follow-ups will throw you off your script anyway. Know your stories, not your sentences.
Picking team wins where your role is fuzzy. If you can't clearly say what you did, pick a different story.
No numbers. You don't need fake precision, but "cut the build time roughly in half" beats "made it faster."
Dodging the failure questions. When they ask about a mistake, give a real one and own it. Trying to disguise a humblebrag as a weakness reads as not being able to Earn Trust, which is the opposite of the point.
A simple prep plan
Read the 16 principles in Amazon's words. Then write your six to eight stories in STAR form. Make a quick grid: principles down one side, your stories across the top, and check which stories cover which principles. If a principle has no story next to it, write one or find one from your past.
Then say them out loud. Reading a story and telling it under light pressure are different skills, and the second one is what gets tested. A mock interview where someone asks the follow-ups is the closest thing to the real round. Even a friend with the principle list in hand works.
The goal isn't to sound like you memorized a values page. It's to have real examples ready so that when the question comes, you reach for a story instead of freezing. Do the prep once, and the round stops being scary.