Amazon Discover: Spring Insight Participant Review

Each day we were able to attend a variety of talks where we learnt about the nature of the company, how roles worked, affinity groups. We also took part in smaller technology workshops in which we wrote and discussed code after being given tasks such as coding a game with Characters. In the final day we also took part in a fun pop quiz as well learning about the mentor scheme. This was enjoyable and fun.

Yes - I learnt how to succeed in the interview with tips such as how to prepare, what to say and what skills to showcase for the internship and also improved my coding skills during the workshops as I wrote code in Java and was able to practise skills such as debugging my code, writing tests and extending code to do more interesting things as well as writing code for a specification with requirements we asked about.

It was interesting to speak to someone in the role I would like as I wanted to know what they say to day and the variety of work. It was also interesting to find out about the diverse range of subsidiaries at Amazon e.g. Amazon Video, Alexa, AWS, e.t.c. as I didn’t know they existed and it has made me more interested in working for Amazon due to the diversity of jobs.

It was really lovely and welcoming. In the workshops, the mentor was really nice; he encouraged us to share and discuss our code but also didn’t force us to if we didn’t volunteer. We also learnt about Amazons core principles which were really nice to hear such as inclusivity and being collaborative, so Amazon seems like a really nice work environment. They also mentioned how they are quite flexible with when employees work.

I really enjoyed it and learnt a lot. The talks were really engaging because they talked about things we didn’t necessarily know about and were also very interactive with polls and quizzes. The coding workshops were also really enjoyable, enabling me to increase my knowledge and have collaborate and code with others. They encouraged me to think of innovative solutions and employ the skills I knew, as well as learning more skills such as data structures.

Yes

I would say prepare with coding exercises for the technical interview because this is what you’re asked to do - practise explaining code to a friend or even in the mirror as this is something unusual you’ll do in the interview. You should also prepare examples of how you’ve shown leadership principles as this is asked - it’s fine to have these on a piece of paper if it helps you remember them.