How to prepare for a Solutions Architect interview with Amazon Web Services (AWS), including both technical and behavioral interview components.

Who is a Solution Architect?

• A Solutions Architect role is a technical position that involves tackling business challenges and requires a combination of technical skills, consulting abilities, and behavioral competencies, as the role involves working closely with customers.

• The role involves identifying and solving business challenges at a large scale. The interviewers will look for evidence of this experience in a candidate's resume and answers during the interview. The job description should be read thoroughly to understand the requirements and key responsibilities.

Technical Interview Components

1. Understanding the role's requirements

   • Review job descriptions on the respective company portal, to understand the requirements and key responsibilities.

   • Understand the job role to ensure that it aligns with personal interests,

   • Research the company culture, and the interviewer's background to find common ground to build rapport during the interview.

2. Having hands-on experience

   • Certifications without hands-on experience can be a disadvantage during the interview process. To gain Hands-on-experience you can use the following 12 weeks structured path from Beginner to advanced -AWS projects.

3. Understanding Amazon's leadership principles

   • Amazon's leadership principles, such as learn and be curious, customer obsession, and earning trust, learn more here

   • These principles require the ability to keep up with technology changes, understand customer needs, and build trust through effective communication.

   • The relevance/importance of the principles may vary depending on the level and specific role of the position.

4. Use STAR format to respond to questions during interviews

   • The STAR format enables you to story tell your experience in a more structured and quantified experience. The STAR method is a structured way of answering behavioral interview questions

   • STAR Answer format includes the following

     • SITUATION

       • Describe the situation you were in, or the task you needed to do. Give enough detail for the interviewer to understand the complexities of the situation. This example can be from a previous job, school project, volunteer activity, or other relevant event.

     • TASK

       • Describe your goal.

     • ACTION

       • Describe the actions you took. Use an appropriate amount of detail. What steps did you take? What was your contribution? Let us know what you did, not what your team or group did. Use the word ‘I,’ not ‘we.’

     • RESULT

       • Describe the outcome of your actions. Don’t be shy about taking credit for what you did. What happened? How did it end? What did you accomplish? What did you learn? Provide examples using metrics or data if applicable.

   • To learn more on the STAR format check out this resource

5. Illustrate Collaboration and Team Building in your former experiences.

6. Prepare for follow-up questions from the interviewees

7. Ask questions to clarify any uncertainties about the role or team

Behavioral interview components

1. Effective communication

2. Rehearsing and mastering storytelling is crucial to maintaining a connection during interviews.

3. Take time to understand the interview question and clarifying any ambiguities before answering.

4. Make eye contact

5. Be open to corrections from the interviewer

6. Use frequent feedback loops

   • Feedback loop is a communication technique that involves both parties in the conversation having a chance to provide feedback, ask questions, and clarify misunderstandings.

   • Example use: when asked a question before answering it, reframe the question to ensure that you understood what is being asked and to give an opportunity to the interviewer to clarify any ambiguities or assumptions.

7. Have a calm demeanor during interviews.

Join a Community

A link to a new Discord server for BESA participants who are pursuing certifications was shared to enable collaboration and allow them to support each other during their certification journey.

Kudos to the Besa team for curating yet another insightful and impactful session!💪 #Besa #Mock-Interview-prep #AWS #Technology #Innovation #ContinuousLearning