7/30/2021 How to answer interview questions about Amazon leadership principle "Insist on the Highest Standards" — Interview Genie

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The seventh Amazon Leadership Principle is “Insist on

the Highest Standards.” If you’re preparing for an
interview at Amazon, you should ask yourself what
Amazon means by “highest standards” and how this Blog Categories
leadership principle applies to your role at the
company. Amazon interviews

If you don’t know about the Amazon leadership Behavioral questions

principles, consider first reading this article about
ESL candidates
interviewing at Amazon.
Interview basics

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7/30/2021 How to answer interview questions about Amazon leadership principle "Insist on the Highest Standards" — Interview Genie

How Amazon explains the Questions and answers

“Highest Standards” leadership
principle
The seventh Amazon leadership principle is “Insist on
the Highest Standards” - this is how Amazon explains CONTACT
the principle: ME

Leaders have relentlessly high standards – many

people may think these standards are
unreasonably high. Leaders are continually
raising the bar and driving their teams to deliver
high-quality products, services and processes.
Leaders ensure that defects do not get sent
down the line and that problems are fixed so
they stay fixed.

What does the “Highest

Standards” leadership principle
mean?
Having high standards means you make exceptionally
high demands of yourself and the products and
services you work on. At Amazon, standards are set
through service level agreements (SLAs). An SLA is a
set of agreed upon standards at which any service or
product will perform. In an Amazon SLA, even the
worst outcome will outpace industry standards.

Nearly everything at Amazon has an SLA, and as such,

nearly everything is measured to ensure the SLA
standards are met. In your current job, have you
taken the time to instrument your processes and
services? Have you set clear expectations of success

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7/30/2021 How to answer interview questions about Amazon leadership principle "Insist on the Highest Standards" — Interview Genie

that you can measure via that instrumentation? If so,

in your interview, be ready to tell your story.

If you want to show your interviewer that you insist on

the highest standards, you should demonstrate that
you:

• Set SLAs for everything, and don’t take shortcuts

on instrumentation.

• Continually self-critique your work to make sure

the quality is the best it can be.

• Accept and seek coaching and feedback from

your manager and others about improving the
quality of your work.

• Demand that your team delivers high-quality

products, services, and solutions.

• Coach employees about setting their own high

standards and exceeding customer expectations.

Interview questions related to

“Highest Standards”
If your interviewer asks about this leadership
principle, she or he might ask one of the following
questions:

• Tell me about a time when you’ve been

unsatisfied with the status quo. What did you do
to change it? Were you successful?

• Tell me about a time you wouldn’t compromise

on achieving a great outcome when others felt
something was already good enough. What was
the situation?

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7/30/2021 How to answer interview questions about Amazon leadership principle "Insist on the Highest Standards" — Interview Genie

• What measures have you personally put in place

to ensure performance improvement targets and
standards are achieved?

• Describe the most significant, continuous

improvement project that you’ve led. What was
the catalyst for this change and how did you go
about it?

• Give me an example of a goal you’ve had where

you wish you had done better. What was the goal
and how could you have improved on it?

• Tell me about a time when you worked to

improve the quality of a product / service /
solution that was already getting good customer
feedback? Why did you think it needed more
improvement?

Give an example where you refused to compromise

your standards around quality/customer service, etc.
Why did you feel so strongly about the situation?
What were the consequences? The result?

How many answers do I need for

this principle?
Most people say that you should have two examples
for each principle. That’s a good benchmark, but what
if you get asked four Highest Standards questions?
Will you have enough stories to answer them all? In
the onsite interview the interviewers will divide the
principles up and each take two or three, so in one
interview you may have more than two questions
about a principle. What will you do if that happens? I
suggest that you practice using some questions
you’ve developed for other principles to answer the
Highest Standards questions. I think it’s a better idea
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7/30/2021 How to answer interview questions about Amazon leadership principle "Insist on the Highest Standards" — Interview Genie

to think of having a group of answers you can tailor

for the different principles depending on what you get
asked that thinking of preparing two answers for each
principle.

How to answer interview

questions related to the
“Highest Standards”
leadership principle
Sample Answers for this principle

Answer given by an E-Commerce Manager

Tell me about a time when you worked to

improve the quality of a product / service /
solution that was already getting good customer
feedback? Why did you think it needed more
improvement?

When I took over the e-commerce part of the website

I learned that the experience related to returning
merchandise was one of the worst experiences on the
site. It was difficult to navigate, and when I asked why
it was so bad the answer I got from senior
management alarmed me. They didn’t want the
experience to be easy because they didn’t want
people to return things. This felt intuitively wrong to
me but I knew I needed the numbers to prove it. I
began collecting data relating to return customers
and how the return had an impact on how how likely
they were to return. After a lot of digging we learned
that if a customer had a good return experience they
were more likely to buy from us in the future. We set
off to create the most frictionless return experience
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7/30/2021 How to answer interview questions about Amazon leadership principle "Insist on the Highest Standards" — Interview Genie

possible and then we measured the impact of the

customer to return and what they were likely to
purchase. As we made changes to the return
experience, we carefully measured the impact.

Note that, in this answer, the candidate could have

simply followed along with the established protocol, but
he sought to hold himself and his company to a higher
standard, demonstrating real leadership and delivering
results.

Answer given by a Solutions Architect

What measures have you personally put in place

to ensure performance improvement targets
and standards are achieved?

In my last job, when I joined the solutions architect

team, my main goal was to ensure that our enterprise
clients integrated seamlessly with the solutions we
were providing. I became obsessed with the
onboarding with these customers, and one metric in
particular, which was the time the client signed
contract to the time they first used the services. To
me this was the metric that mattered the most, but
we weren’t paying much attention to it. I knew that if
we showed the value that our service provided
sooner, they would be more likely to stay with us over
the long term. We measured and then optimized
processes based on what we found. For a good while
in that role, nearly every measurement of success I
created for myself and my team rolled up onto the
larger onboarding metric. We had a set of metrics that
we aspired to improve that ultimately rolled up to the
onboarding one. As a result of these efforts over the
course of a year, and ruthlessly optimizing our
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7/30/2021 How to answer interview questions about Amazon leadership principle "Insist on the Highest Standards" — Interview Genie

processes, we cut the average time of onboarding

down by 50%.

As in the previous answer, this candidate demonstrates

that she absolutely will not settle for the status quo, and
so she sets a higher standard for her and her team.
Leaders don’t need someone else to set the bar high,
because they set it high for themselves.

Looking for more help?

Visit my Amazon
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of my best interview tips
in one place.

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