I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Booking.com in Mar 2023
Interview
The interview process consists of a series of well-structured steps: 1) You are invited to an online assessment in which you need to solve a few algorithmic questions. 2) You meet with your recruiter, talk about the details of the job, brief overview of your experience. I found the recruiters knowledgeable about the job opening as well as the broader department. 3) Coding interview where you solve a problem with 1-2 interviewers. 4) System design where you solve a system design question again with 1-2 interviewers. 5) Fit interview where you (likely) meet with your Senior EM and they assess if you are a fit for their team. All of the engineers in my interview were friendly. Special gratitude to the EMs in the fit interview as I had internet connectivity issues (everyone's nightmare when it comes to interviews), they were extremely patient and understanding. I very much like to point out that my interview experience by far was one of the best if not the best I've had so far (and I did have quite a few interviews). My recruiter was quite responsive, always kept me in the loop, and is very empathetic.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
I don't think I should be sharing the interview questions even though I didn't sign an NDA.
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 (Amsterdam)
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