I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at Booking.com (Ámsterdam) in May 2017
Interview
HR recruiter found me via LinkedIn and submitted me as a candidate, I passed the first coding exam at hackerrank and failed in phone call code interview. technical recruiter was a great person and the whole experience was good.
They didn't ask me to run the solution in code interview, the just wanted to see how do I think. I was previously scared because I already did some solutions in codepair and in the same link that they sent (which supposed to store the code), but they told me not to worry about that. after about 3 hints I think I was judged as a weak developer. I kept talking about what I am doing and they were satisfied about that and they considered that I have a good communications skills.
questions in the first code test was from easy-group in hackerrank but the questions weren't ready questions in the website, they were prepared by booking.com. the major problem in code test at hackerrank was the time, and you should be prepared well for getting the inputs and outputs (stout, stdin).
I checked the reviews here and I saw a majority of persons who passed the first code tests but then failed in on-site test in Amsterdam, so I wasn't so optimistic about going there, even if I've passed the phone call interview.
Interview questions [5]
Question 1
1- (Coding test at hackerrank) Specify types of the polygons (square, rectangle, polygon). They didn't provide the number of lines, and negative numbers should be considered as polygons, and square shouldn't be considered as rectangle.
2- (Coding test at hackerrank) You have a list of words and a list of hotel reviews, try to sort the hotels based on the number of words from the first list that is exist in the each review. if an hotel has maximum number of 4 words then it should be the highest in the sorting..
3- (Coding test at hackerrank) You have time-stamps (mentioned as integers), which represents phone call begin and end to booking.com call center. find the number of overlaps in calls that suggests to add more call center agents.
- (Phone call coding interview). You have two lists, the first contain larger words, write a method that finds if the anagram from the second list's word in the first list's word.
I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at Booking.com
Interview
I recently interviewed with Booking.com for a software engineer role. The process was well-organized and took about 3–4 weeks. It started with an online assessment on HackerRank with a couple of LeetCode medium problems. That was followed by a technical screen where I did live coding and discussed basic algorithms. The final round was a full day of back-to-back sessions: algorithmic coding, system design (something like designing a hotel availability checker), a behavioral round using STAR questions, and a chat with a manager about company values. The interviewers were professional and friendly, and the problems felt relevant to Booking's actual business. On the downside, some coding rounds felt repetitive, and I didn't get much feedback after being rejected. Overall, it was a fair but challenging process. My advice: practice medium-level array and hash map problems, review basic system design, and have solid STAR stories ready. I'd rate it 4 out of 5 stars and would recommend it to other engineers.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Design a hotel search and availability system that returns available rooms for a given date range and can handle high traffic.
I applied online. I interviewed at Booking.com (Ámsterdam)
Interview
The whole process is composed of about 5 stages. Initial interview, then technical interview, followed by a “ownership” interview, then by a team-fit check interview. The initial interview is done by recruiters not based in the Netherlands (at least my experience) and felt as if the role had already been filled by the time I took it. Was answered with a “I’m doing good, hope you are doing good too. So this interview…” to “Hi, nice to meet you! How are you?”. It simply felt as if they didn’t want to be there and there was 0 engagement.
Screener with a Director, coding round with TDD where you pair with an engineer and have an engineering manager present, behavioural with a senior engineering manager and an apprentice who was sitting it