Do not lose your time!
I have applied through an outsource recruitment company and I had first introduction interview with them which was really friendly and explaining all the details. They actually asked several behavioral questions and how familiar I am with the technologies listed in the job offer. After that interview, they have decided to send my CV to Skyscanner since my profile fits what Skyscanner looks for.
The next day I have received several e-mails from Skyscanner. One with info about Skyscanner (company's history, products, agile methodologies ) and another one with an invitation for an assignment to complete in a week. They basically ask you to complete an mini-app (in my case an Android app) with their Skyscanner's flights API. You have every info you needed such as documentation, playground to test methods, Sketch design etc. I completed the assignment in 5 days and submitted it. Less than a week, Skyscanner let me know that I was successful with the assignment.
Afterwards, they arranged me two interviews in a day (one cultural and one technical). Cultural one is based on your current working environment, you need to show that you had dealt with difficulties, bugs and conflicts there. You should demonstrate that you contributed your team and took the initiatives when it is needed to take action. After I had technical one which started with internet and web tech questions such as how internet works, dns, protocols(http,tcp,udp), cookies etc. then a programming question but not coding you need to explain what steps you would take to solve a programming problem finally several behavioral question as I had in cultural fit interview. (Biggest bug, last time you solved a bug, what you learned from your bugs or mistakes).
I am sure that I did well on both cultural and technical interview since the interviewer was trying to stop me because I was able to talk about in more detailed way in technical interview :) I was giving the next's question's response :) The cultural one was also went well as a nice and smooth conversation.
In a week, Skyscanner's recruited reached me out with an e-mail implying that I have to focus on gaining more technical expertise. That is the sentence in the e-mail I received:
"our hiring bar is technically very high, and whilst we think you have many of the attributes that we look to hire at Skyscanner, we would like you to gain further technical expertise before reapplying to us."
Then I asked for a phone call to get more feedback to develop my technical skills but I have realized that I have not had any bad feedback for neither technical interview nor cultural one.
Feedback from technical interview:
- The candidate did not talk about IP in detail.
- DNS translates host name in to IP adress instead of URL.
The recruiter also read the feedback from cultural interview. According to interviewer's feedback, I am a contributive professional who learns from his mistakes and bugs, takes action and initiatives when needed and who is good at collaboration in a team.
Finally the recruiter told me that despite having a nice feedback from cultural interview they do not want to continue with me because the recruitment team (or recruiter) does not think that I would be able to work at Skyscanner since I have not worked in a "WELL-STRUCTURED" environment.
The sentence was:
"We do not think that working at Skyscanner is not for you because you have not worked in a "WELL-STRUCTURED" environment before. Skyscanner has self-autonomous professionals."
I thought this should have been a joke because:
1) She emailed me saying that I had to work on gaining more technical expertise.
2) The she told me that working at Skyscanner is not for me because I have never worked in a "WELL-STRUCTURED" environment before :)
If I was not able to make it to the next step because of reason 2, why did she send me an email saying that I need to focus on technical expertise?
If I was not able to make it to the next step because of reason 1, why did she tell me that it was not for me because of that I do not have any experience in a WELL-STRUCTURED environment before :)
What she told me on the phone and in the mail are not consistent, I totally think that she was looking for an excuse to reject me. This might be because of visa issues or something else.
So an advise, they have recruiters that do not know what they want and I had an amateur hiring process for a "WELL-STRUCTURED" company :)
Do not lose your time!
