I applied online. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Skyscanner (Edimburgo, Escocia) in Dec 2016
Interview
Stage 1: Hackerrank
Stage 2: Skype
Stage 3: Edinburgh headquarters interviews
30 minute Skype interview was composed of competency questions about myself.
During the headquarters application process we were firstly asked to (as a group of 6) create a project of Skyscanner rating system, and present our solution including UI, technical and more broad evaluations.
Later 50 minute technical interview was concentrating on a technical implementation and structure of a car hiring data model. It did not require any specific deep technical knowledge, but rather intuition of a data model structure.
Cultural interview was more standard job interview, but very pleasant.
In all of the situations interviewers were extremely helpful, polite and created a professional yet friendly atmosphere that made me learn new things and really enjoy the process.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Desing a Skyscanner rating system. Why do I want to work for Skyscanner?
I applied through an employee referral. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Skyscanner (Edimburgo, Escocia) in Jun 2016
Interview
A phone interview followed by a 70 minutes coding session on Hackerrank. The phone review went really smooth without many technical questions. I got two questions to for coding test and I ran out of time before finishing the second one. Usually the number of inputs are given in the exercise questions of Hackerrank but in the exam quesion, the number of inputs was not given (or I missed something as the clock was ticking). I spent a lot of time to figure out how to count the number of inputs on Hackerrank.
I applied online. The process took 4 months. I interviewed at Skyscanner (Edimburgo, Escocia) in Sep 2016
Interview
Applied through their website, got a codility test, then 1hr skype technical test, then full day onsite round (6 straight hours).
Codility test: this environment is god-awful, and was pretty tricky
1 hr Skype Technical Test: pretty simple algorithm question implemented through screen sharing in environment of my choosing. Not too bad
Full day onsite round: This day felt really fun, and as others have said you get the sense people enjoy working there.
The negative rating, though, comes from the very clear lack of transparency about what they are looking for. I applied as a mobile engineer, and the rejection came because I did not have enough server know-how, essentially. What's confusing, though, is that they claim you'll "learn on the job", which I was looking forward to, but how can you be evaluated on expertise you're supposed to learn once hired and rejected for that, when the expertise I was bringing to the table was never fully evaluated? Pretty frustrating end to a long process, where the on site round makes you believe you did well, only for the feedback to be centered around things outside your control. If I had known this going in, I wouldn't have wasted my time.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Implement a method that determines the index in a string at which, if that character is removed, results in the string being a palindrome. Asked to solve in O(n) complexity.