My first contact and pre-evaluating interview was held over the phone, after which they decided to invite me for the next round which would be a group recruitment session at their office for the same position. This first talk was to discuss briefly my past career background and experiences, as well as why I would want to join booking and some other questions.
In the group session I competed against ca. 10 other candidates and three Booking.com representatives and recruiters.
They started out with a brief info presentation about booking.com. Afterwards us candidates were asked to introduce ourselves and state why we'd want to join their company.
Then the room was divided into two teams. My group was asked to list all the reasons and advantages for hotels when they join booking.com. The other team had to answer why hotels would not want to join booking.com, something I was already asked in my previous phone interview.
After both teams presented their list there was a brief, open discussion. They then introduced us to a booking.com employee for a Q&A session about the company and his role and impressions.
This was followed by a short break, after which we were split into teams again to solve a group challenge, in which we'd have a list of three hotels with three different scenarios/and,or problems. We were asked to prioritise this list to our best ability as a group and present our findings together, while the recruiters were watching us and took notes.
After the presentation, we were given an hour for lunch and were served sandwiches. To conclude they asked everyone individually to a separate room to discuss wether or not they could move on to the next (personal) interview round or not, which was also held on the same day.
I disappointingly was not invited to a personal interview. In our individual talk they gave me their list of impressions about me and why they thought I would not fit into their corporate culture. Strangely, they seemed to have a positive image of me, as they found me "highly driven (perhaps too much?), very analytical and attempting to get to the core problems, a good team player, presenter and communicator who asked many vlid and good questions and was very informed." In their own words, I was "not too creative in finding a solution, while I focused too much on finding the problem".
I was personally disappointed that after I left such an overly good and driven impression, they would not give me the opportunity to a personal interview.