I went through a total of 7 interview steps during the first phase:
1) Initial contact with a recruiter working through an ATS on behalf of a Kyndryl vendor.
2) Second interview with the vendor directly.
3) Third round with Kyndryl: general technical questions, very relaxed tone and positive atmosphere.
4) Fourth step with the end client: much more technically demanding. I was asked advanced questions, such as “If you have a massive N×N matrix, how do you compute its dot product in Spark? How do you manage it?” — definitely not trivial.
At the end of this first round, I declined the offer from the first vendor. I had been very clear about my salary expectations from the beginning, yet they offered me a compensation even lower than my current package. I found this to be quite misleading and disappointing.
Two weeks later... surprise!
Kyndryl reached out again, still interested in my profile, offering me the same position as before.. And so, the process restarted:
5) Introductory call with the team manager.
6) Interview with HR and the HR manager.
7)Technical interview with the Cloud Leader at Kyndryl.
And guess what? It’s still not over. I’ll keep you posted.
It’s been an extremely long process, technically stimulating, but also quite exhausting. You need a lot of patience, especially since you might have to start all over again if the vendor changes mid-process.
I hope this experience helps other candidates: always ask for clarity from the very beginning, especially when it comes to contractual terms and salary expectations.