Horrible all around, in all honesty.

Had two interviewers (both non-HR representatives) present. One of them you could hold a conversation with, while the other was having way too much difficulty speaking English and expressing himself, to the point I was almost ready to offer to switch to Japanese (despite Rakuten supposedly using it as their official 'inside the company' language).

He also did not understand some of my questions, even after I repeated myself and gave examples of what kind of response I expected.

Both of them asked me mostly behavioral questions (that they were both reading from somewhere off-camera, which I could clearly see) that felt very uninspired and somewhat disrespectful, in all honesty.

• "What inspires you in your work?"
• "What makes you happy?"
• "What are your ambitions?"
• "What kind of technology do you want to master/learn?"

There has been one question that felt like it was possibly tailored to my CV, but perhaps that was just a coincidence. Other than that, there has been little to no talk about what their team does or what the product actually is.

I honestly felt like I ended up asking them more questions than they were asking me, and perhaps that's why I did not go further in the process than that.

Ended up getting ghosted by them after that. In all honesty, it should be the other way around.

The fact they never even bothered to send even a rejection letter (even after I reached out directly to inquire about the state of the selection process, no less) makes me wonder how they treat their own employees if that's how they treat their candidates.

• Tell us about how you worked on performance optimization at your previous company.
• What inspires you in your work?
• How did you solve a particular issue at work (typical STAR stuff)?