"Booking.com is a 20-year startup."

I was passively searching for a job when I received an invitation from a recruiter representing Booking.com.

Initially, we had a 30-minute screening and introduction call where I discussed myself, my experience, and the problems I solve daily. The recruiter also asked why I wanted to work at Booking.com.

After this call, I received a link to a HackerRank test. There were 75 minutes to solve 4 questions.

The next day, I received an email from the recruiter congratulating me on passing the test and inviting me to a face-to-face interview at their headquarters in Amsterdam. The technical call interview was skipped due to my excellent HackerRank test results.

We arranged a date for the onsite interview, which was scheduled for 6 weeks later. Booking.com covered all costs for flight tickets, accommodation, and visa preparation. The company offered to let me spend 4 to 5 days in Amsterdam to learn more about the city, its environment, culture, and so on.

Before the face-to-face interview, I received a lot of helpful information from company representatives regarding interview preparation, living, and working in Amsterdam. I also had several calls with the recruiter where I could ask questions and get tips about each interview path. The most useful notes from my perspective:

• The company applies for a work visa for your partner as well (girlfriend/boyfriend, fiancée/fiancé, wife/husband).
• They try to find a job for your partner.
• They cover all relocation costs.
• There is a 30% tax ruling.
• For the first month, you can live in an apartment at the company's expense.
• They also offer their own realtor to help search for an apartment.
• They offer a 20-foot container to move all your belongings.
• There are language courses available (at the company's expense).
• Lunch in the canteen costs 2 euros.

Day of the interview.

The interview process started at 11:30.

Initially, there was a recruiter interview.

After that, I had a 1-hour lunch with a compatriot who already works at Booking.com. It was not a behavioral interview (as warned). During this lunch, you can get necessary information about relocation, living, and working for the company.

After lunch, I had my first interview: a 1-hour coding interview with two developers.

The second interview was about system design with two developers.

The last interview was non-technical.

At the end of each interview, you can ask all your questions. Here I realized that it was not the best place I could have ended up. At least the following points concerned me, and perhaps they will matter to you too:

• Booking.com doesn't have a CI/CD workflow per se. Only about 30% of projects currently have or are introducing tools like Jenkins. In other projects, artifacts are deployed by manually executing scripts on virtual machines/jump servers.
• The myth that there are no unit tests at Booking.com isn't a myth. Some employees acknowledge this problem, stating that some projects have low code coverage with unit tests. However, they justify this by saying integration tests solve all problems, which, in my opinion, does not sound in their favor.
• To my question, "What inspires you as a developer at Booking.com?", I didn't receive convincing answers from the 4-5 company employees who interviewed me. It's sad to realize.
• The final point I want to highlight is that the position I applied for involved forming a new team, which would specifically deal with migrating from a monolith to microservices. When I asked the manager about the migration strategy, I didn't receive even a rough plan. This was one of my main motivations for trying myself at Booking.com, as I have several years of experience in this area and want to continue developing in it. This significantly (negatively) influenced my perception of Booking.com as a potential future workplace.

Less than a week later, I received feedback from the recruiter. I was asked how I felt about the past interview. I understood that I had almost failed the first part of the technical interview, but I was confident about the other two, feeling that I had performed well. However, according to the report the recruiter had, I was unsuccessful in any of the interviews.

Summarizing:

• The recruitment process is well-established.
• The coordination process passed without a hitch.
• Booking.com offers a strong relocation package.
• The interview process is competently structured.
• The working environment within the company leaves much to be desired.

I hope my experience will be useful.

The HackerRank test

The recruiter interview

The coding interview

The system design interview

The non-technical interview