I applied through their portal. There were 3 instances that spanned over around 7 weeks. They took 4 days to respond to my initial application with an automated email to schedule a recruiter screening call 2 weeks out. There was a hiccup with the scheduling the day before on their end which they promptly resolved.
The recruiter screener was very straightforward, asked about my salary expectations and shared what they wanted to pay (i later found out he told me less than what they actually offered to pay, i think it was seniority related), preferred start date, need for sponsorship. He asked many questions that he did not know the answer to with the purpose of passing them on to the hiring manager and took thorough notes. Overall it was a good, short, concise call and he did mention that 500+ people had applied and that i should not take it personally if i did not move forward. I appreciated this.
The second interview was a business case presentation and I was given 4 days to prepare it. It took a week for them to reach out to me telling me i passed the recruiter screen and then they booked me for this 2.5 weeks out, saying that i would get the case study exactly 4 days before, and I did. The business case interview consisted of a 20 min presentation to a 2 people panel that then asked technical questions for 40 min. it was good, and they were attentive and precise with their questions, you could see they were evaluating general competence for the role but also thinking style and handling ambiguity, they also left 5 minutes to answer my questions and clear any doubts i had thoroughly.
I did not hear from my recruiter again but I heard from the coordination team that i had made it to the final round, again booked for 2 weeks out. That was a culture FIT interview that started with a short case study they asked me to think through live and then just general questions about my style of working, expertise, scenarios, what one would expect for this stage. it felt very personalized and positive, like they were really trying to get to know me and find a fit. They told me they still had a couple interviews but they would get back to me in max 2 weeks. they also stayed a few minutes over to finish answering my questions which was again very much appreciated.
This was on a friday and 1 business day later, on monday, i heard from a lead recruiter asking to have a call and they presented me with the offer, which was higher than the previous recruiter had mentioned. I took the offer and everything has been very smooth since.
There is a thorough background check once you accept the offer and they do it through a third party, this is the only part of the process where I genuinely struggled/stressed because this 3rd party keeps asking for the same documents over and over and it took over 2 weeks of almost daily back and forth for them to finally clear it, with my start date approaching. On the booking.com side, the post offer acceptance process has been flawless.