I applied through a recruiter. The process took 4 months. I interviewed at Booking.com (Amsterdam)
Interview
Worst Recruiter Experience Ever
This is a very long and bad story about recruiter experience with Booking.com
One of the recruiter from Booking.com contacted with me at September 23 via Linked'in about Software Engineering roles and after that we contunie on email and we scheduled meeting at a time, I have to reschedule it for later because of my urgent issue. We decided for later.
We scheduled second meeting after one month later on zoom but he didn't show up and didn't inform me before neither after meeting. And I send an email for it but he didn't reply me too.
Until this point it was enough bad but there is more than these.
After months later middle of December he sent me an email that just mentioned new vacancies at Booking.com and I reply him and asked the reason not showing up at first meeting and he didn't give any reply to this email.
Contunie,
Later, one of the an other recruiter from Booking.com, sent me the email about new opportunities and very enthusiastic long explanation about company culture,
I didn't reply that day and next day he sent me other email that ask what I think about it and then I reply him I would like to meet for short talk for the opportunities and I sent my available times and (guess whatttttt :D ) he didn't reply me toooo :D.
Contunieeeee
The first recruiter sent me new message for vacancies a few days ago without any explanation.
I am very curios how this company still exist :D
These are the worst worst experiences ever that I have with recruiters.
4
Other Software Engineer interview reviews for Booking.com
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