Interview glossary

The words, and what they cost you.

Every term here has a definition you can find anywhere. The part worth reading is what it means when you are the one in the room.

Bar raiser

An Amazon interviewer from outside the hiring team, trained to protect the hiring bar and able to veto an offer.

A round that asks what you have actually done before, on the theory that past behaviour predicts future behaviour.

A consulting round where you work through a business problem out loud with the interviewer.

The um, uh, like and you know that appear in speech, usually while the speaker plans what to say next.

Amazon's published set of principles that its behavioral interviews are explicitly scored against.

McKinsey's behavioral round, run alongside the case and scored on its own dimensions.

A four-part structure for answering behavioral questions: situation, task, action, result.