I applied through an employee referral. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Booking.com (Amsterdam) in Jul 2015
Interview
About a week after I sent my resume and cover letter, there was a phone screen, which lasted about 20 minutes. I was interviewed by phone in the next day, for about 1 hour, in which I had to do a programming exercise in any language of my choice. After about a week, they called again saying they wanted me to visit their office in Amsterdam for another interview.
They paid the entire trip (planes and hotel) from my country, Brazil, to Amsterdam. The interview had a few hard questions, but it was mostly fun. All the interviewers were very friendly.
A couple of days after my return to Brazil, they called me with the offer.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Find how many moves it takes from point A in a maze to point B.
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