When preparing for interviews (especially behavioral), it is crucial that you be direct and concise. Treat your interviewer like a busy executive who has no time for you. So, all words you use should be nutrient-dense. No low-calorie, filler, or weasel words please.

How to piss off an Amazonian

At Amazon, we are taught to quantify and measure, constantly. You don’t try to make your case without first at least attempting to size the value or impact of your effort (preferably both). You are taught that adverbs (and many adjectives) should be replaced with numbers (or only use with numbers to level-set).

The following is a list of words and phrases I have collected post-Amazon experience when editing documents of direct reports and mentees or coaching PM candidates. After a few reviews, people quickly come to know my question is going to be “how are you measuring that.” If you are interviewing at a metrics/data-driven organization, I promise they are thinking the same thing. Just give me the measure, don’t wave your hands

FIller, Low-Calorie Words

This is my running list of filler words and phrases that are sure to annoy the executive you are addressing or your interviewer. These words will drive them to ask probing questions:

• Many More - Probing question: How many more? Why didn’t you just tell me how many more? Are you hiding something?

• Unreasonable - How is X unreasonable? Pushing boundaries? Asking for us to do tasks within their environment not our own.

• Frivolous - What makes it frivolous?

• Bigger - How big? 10x? 500 customers?

Time : I think “What is the date or time period?”

• In the future - Give me a date. If you say in the future, immediately I am asking myself, how far in the future.

• Some time - This is worse than in the future, what does sometime mean? Will get to it before I retire?

Frequency: I think “How often does X happen?”

• Most common - Give me context. Is this the most common out of 10 things or two things? Is it happening 50% or 90% of the time?

• A Lot - Again. Give me context. What is ‘a lot’? How do you measure a lot?

Need Context: I think “How X impressive or different?” 

• Important - How important? What breaks without it? How much $$? What happens if it goes missing?

• Impactful - How is it impactful? What does it impact exactly?

• Will make a difference - How much of a difference? Good difference or bad difference?

• Special - How special? Does it happen once a year or once a decade?

Need Details: I think “How X” or “What makes it X?”

• Complex - Different people have different ideas of what constitutes complex. What is complex to a newbie is yawn-worthy for an experienced person. How are you quantifying the complexity? It time? In a number of moving parts

• Complicated -”It’s complicated.” Who thinks it is complicated? What are the factors driving the complicated situation? Don’t use the word with out the why of the complication. You would be amazed at how often this word is dropped without context or details to justify the use of the word.

• Critical - How are you measuring critical? Money? Time? Users? Was it the critical item or action? What would failure look like?

• Broadly - How broad? Covers three countries or three continents?

• A Solid Case - What is solid? Give me context and qualify.

Always give me a number: Never use these words without from X to Y

• Up significantly - How significantly? 2, 20, 200, 2B? 5% or 15%. Skip significantly and just tell me how much it has gone up. If you can say significantly with confidence, someone has a metric somewhere you can access. What is it?

• Improved - If something is improved, there is a baseline, tell me what it is. Don’t just say it is improved, I need to know how to quantify this improvement.

• Best - This means there is more than one. The best of what?

• Most - When using this work, know you need to tell me X% of Y. Most 60% or 89%

• Most effective, effectively - Effective at what? Compared to what? Most effective in driving revenue out of 5 things tested? Or effective because it solves the problems in seconds with little work?

• Most efficient, efficiently - See above. How are you measuring efficiency?

• Groundbreaking - Begs the question against what? Who determined it was groundbreaking? You are claiming something is innovative or pioneering. What makes it deserve this classification?

• Nearly all Customers - Is nearly 95% or 80%? Or are you really clueless? How many customers exactly?

• Significantly better - What is significant? 60%, 75%? 1B or 100B? Or just 5 customers who drive $5B in revenue?

• Much Faster - How much faster? 1 hr? 2 days? 3 months? 50% faster? Give me numbers an context.

• Reduced - Always tell me from X to Y, where did you start vs where are we today.

• Often - How often does it happen?

• Rarely - What makes it rare? Once in a year? 10% vs 1% of the time?

Not as extreme: But quantification helps

• Consistent - A little definition of how you are determining consistent or stable will help.

• Well - If it is ‘well-implemented,” what is poorly implemented?

Resources:

On top of my experiences, I love to hear other people’s take on Amazon and always using numbers when and where you can. Long after I started this list, Danny Sheridan shared this article. What he added of utmost importance is the reminder: If you get a question, reply with one of the four Amazonian answers.

• Yes

• No

• A number

• I don’t know — and I’ll get back to you by <date>