Financial Analyst Internship

Four half-hour one-on-one interviews in a row, 8am Friday after finals week.

To start at the beginning: I received a call from them, and set up the interview time. I unfortunately had to turn down the 14:00 Thursday interview time, because I had a final, so I was offered 8am the next day. I think I should've said something like "no", but I agreed.

When I arrived, it was in their beautiful campus just south of Lake Union. I was there fifteen early, expecting to wait - I did, for about 25 minutes, as the interviewers seemed to arrive just a few minutes before when the interview was supposed to begin. There were three or four others in the same interview group. Amazon told us not to worry about dressing too formal (jeans = work clothes in Corporate Finance on the west coast) - all of us wore suits, none of us wore ties.

We went up, were quickly divided, and put into tiny little rooms where I waited around another five or ten minutes for the first interviewer. That threw me off. It was a Chinese lady, with English clearly not her first language - I could barely understand her, and I normally dig through accents quite easily. After half an hour, gradually getting better at understanding her, it was over. I don't even really remember the questions she asked - the normal "found these questions online" interview stuff, just worse because she understood none of my idioms nor half my terms ... it was horrible.

The next two interviews were younger ladies, probably mid to late twenties, with whom I got along great. Personality questions, working with teams, you know, the deal. It was pretty good. We were all smiling, getting along great ... so I was confident again.

The last interviewer was an East Indian MBA, probably 35-40, who was completely fluent in English, thank the lord. Basic questions again, then the classic Amazon - "how many gas stations do you think Seattle needs to satisfy demand?" - okay, the one my buddies were asked was "how many gas stations do you think are in Seattle?", which is fairly different. Either way, I went through my little Spiel, then he asked what ten financial ratios I would look at each day if I were CEO. If I were asked this now, I would say (in other words), "how the hell am I supposed to know? I'm interviewing for an internship, not a CEO position." - but I was caught off guard and stumbled through the question. It didn't help that he was persistent in pushing me to answer - again, if I could do it over ...

I was interviewing for an offer a year out, because I was going abroad for a year. I didn't get the offer immediately, but was told to come back and interview again after a few more finance classes. I'm not going to, however, as I'm graduating and you have to still be enrolled to get into the program.

Äh, well.