I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Booking.com (Amsterdam) in Jan 2023
Interview
Overall, the interview was an extremely negative experience, and at times I found it hostile, contradictive, and that the interviewers had made up their mind before the interview even began. The bulk of it was also spent by one of the interviewers saying how awful all the stakeholders are and how they are impossible to work with. While honesty is appreciated, it felt inappropriate to slander co-workers during an interview process and would make me not want to work with the interviewer and possibly for the company. It felt like they had no interest in me as a human being. When trying to share things about myself they just said "okay" and moved on to their next question. It generally felt that they came in with a checkbox of questions they had to ask and keywords they wanted to hear and moved from one to the next without trying to get to know me or have a real conversation. It felt like an interrogation, not an interview which should be a two way conversation to allow both parties to get to know each other.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
The interview started with them telling me "My CV is exactly what we are looking for, you are above this role. Why would you want to take this?" which switched to, "Your CV is two level's behind for this role, why should we hire you?". These are conflicting statements that aren't clear nor did they provide any reason to why they suddenly changed their minds. It felt as if they didn't want to talk to me anymore and were just trying to end it. It also felt as if they were looking for me to say magic keywords in my answers and when they didn't get the magic word they told me I was wrong with no explanation. They asked me how I partner and work with my stakeholders, I explained how I work directly with C-Level in my current role. Providing examples of how I sit down and get hands on with helping them to plan the business strategy, resolve issues, and help drive finance forward at the company. To which I was told, "That's not a partnership". I am not sure what definition of partnership they were looking for but they constantly did this and told me I was wrong and not doing those things in my current role.