Ho presentato la mia candidatura online. La procedura ha richiesto una settimana. Ho sostenuto un colloquio presso Booking.com nel mese di nov 2023
Colloquio
After I applied, I got an automatically generated email with a link to a hackerrank challenge. It was pretty basic Java/Spring Boot implementation of a REST API. A day after, I got an automatically generated email that we wouldn't proceed further. At no point did someone bother to reach out and add a human touch to the communication. It would have been minimum courtesy to offer some feedback on the challenge. The treatment is a major red flag and it seems I dodged a bullet anyway.
Ho presentato la mia candidatura tramite un'agenzia di reclutamento personale. Ho sostenuto un colloquio presso Booking.com (Amsterdam) nel mese di giu 2026
Colloquio
Two stages:
- Technical: consisted of two parts. The first one was a hands-on coding exercise where I had to solve a problem, and the second one was focused on system design.
- Culture fit
Domande di colloquio [1]
Domanda 1
They asked about idempotency, retry mechanisms, inter-process communication, observability, reliability, and scalability.
Ho presentato la mia candidatura tramite un selezionatore. Ho sostenuto un colloquio presso Booking.com
Colloquio
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.
Domande di colloquio [1]
Domanda 1
Design a hotel search and availability system that returns available rooms for a given date range and can handle high traffic.
Ho presentato la mia candidatura online. Ho sostenuto un colloquio presso Booking.com (Amsterdam)
Colloquio
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.