Job Questions > What's the secret to getting hired at > Amazon.com > Jeffrey's Answer

In my case, the secret was to start at the bottom. My first job was as a temporary employee answering the phone--you know, "Thank you for calling Amazon.com, how may I direct your call?"

In my recent jobs, I've been very involved in the hiring process for my team, my department and other groups at Amazon. The secret to getting a technical job at Amazon is easy: know your stuff. We're going to ask you about algorithms, data structures and data models, and we're going to make you write code on the spot to solve a significant problem. We want to know if your solution will scale, and we want to ensure that you've thought about testing and stability.

For non-technical jobs, like program management, the secret is to demonstrate that you can approach a problem from a creative perspective and solve it using technology or in a similarly cost-effective manner.