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Amazon Apprenticeship Competencies: What They Test and How to Prepare
Amazontests school leavers against a specific set of competencies at every stage: from the online assessment through to the final interview. Here's exactly what they test and how to prepare for each one.
Amazon's Core Competencies
Amazon Leadership Principles: all 16 (Customer Obsession, Ownership, Invent and Simplify, etc.)
Assessed at: online assessments, video interview, and assessment centre.
What strong looks like:
A STAR story with a clear individual contribution, a specific outcome, and a genuine reflection on what you learned or would do differently.
The STAR Framework
S · Situation: Set the scene briefly (1–2 sentences). Enough context, no more.
T · Task: What was your specific responsibility? What was expected of you?
A · Action: What YOU did, not "we". Be specific. This is 60% of the answer.
R · Result: Quantify if possible. What changed? What did you learn?
Where to Find Your Examples
You don't need impressive examples: you need specific ones. Strong STAR stories come from:
- Part-time jobs (customer complaints, covering a shift, managing a task alone)
- School projects or coursework (disagreements, tight deadlines, leading a presentation)
- Sport, volunteering, Duke of Edinburgh, clubs, or societies
- Any situation where something went wrong and you fixed it or learned from it
Free prep pack
Preparing for Amazon? Get a full pack free
The full PwC School Leaver pack is free: application stages, the competencies they score, real interview questions, commercial awareness, and a pre-submission checklist. The process it walks through is close enough to the other big schemes, Amazon included, to prep you for all of them.
Want the Amazon pack specifically?
Amazon Apprenticeship Prep Pack
Application stages, competencies, real interview questions, commercial awareness, and a pre-submission checklist: in one complete pack.