I was referred by a current employee of Booking.com for the graduate software developer post.

At first, there was a recruiter's interview via Skype. This interview mainly focused on checking my motivation to join the company and briefly described the role and the interview process.

The next step was a 75-minute online coding test on HackerRank. The test required basic programming, algorithms, and data structures. I found the test quite easy.

About two weeks after passing the HackerRank test, I had a technical phone interview. This interview was also a coding interview, focusing on data structures and algorithms. I was given two problems to solve in 45 minutes. I coded the solutions, described them, and analyzed the runtime complexities of my solutions.

Two days later, the recruiter called me to notify me that I had passed the phone interview and invited me for a face-to-face interview in Amsterdam. The interview was scheduled two months later. However, my Schengen visa application was rejected. Hence, the recruiter informed me that the face-to-face interview would be conducted via BlueJeans.com.

There were a total of three face-to-face interviews:

• The first was a coding interview.
• The second was on system design.
• The third was a commercial awareness interview.

I made a mistake in the coding interview due to some incorrect assumptions. The system design interview did not go too well, as I could not ask proper clarifying questions and therefore could not provide a good answer to the problem.

In the third interview, I was the interviewer. They mainly asked me about my entire experience and projects. They also asked for ideas that could be implemented to commercialize one of my projects. We also discussed the culture at Booking.com and in Amsterdam.

A week after the interview, I received a call from my recruiter who informed me that they were not going to hire me at that time. He specifically mentioned that I assumed many things during the interview which needed clarification, especially in the system design portion. He told me that I could re-apply after six months and wished me luck.