I applied in-person. The process took 5 days. I interviewed at Coolblue (Róterdam) in Feb 2019
Interview
Via via binnengekomen en mailtje gestuurd. Gesprek liep soepel en kon meteen beginnen. Was verder niet zoveel aan. Al moet ik zeggen dat dit al wel een aantal jaar geleden is
I applied online. The process took 1 week. I interviewed at Coolblue in Apr 2023
Interview
I applied online and got a response next day with an invitation for a short call with a recruiter. The atmosphere was very informal. The recruiter asked about my age which was inappropriate and confusing. After that I proceeded with a soft skills interview (one hour duration call). Overall questions during both calls were blurry and chaotic. I didn't hear enough information about position, employer expectations and details about a team. I got refusal before being asked to showcase my technical skills. During a feedback call I received only explanation why I am not a good fit for the role and the company without mentioning any positive signals and sides. My overall impression is that the hiring team doesn't care about supporting candidates during interview process and bothers only about checking checkboxes from their instructions. P.S. I had a feeling that the recruiter wanted to end a feedback call as soon as possible after telling me about the refusal without giving some space to breath, think and analyze my performance.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
A lot of soft skills topic related questions: about motivation to work at the company, why you consider yourself a good fit for the role, what are you most proud of in your job experience, how you handle conflicts, share feedback, what is challenging for you, etc.
I applied online. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Coolblue in Feb 2023
Interview
I applied online and HR sent the invitation with a proposed time and video link. I confirmed but didn't get any reply after that. The interview was weird. He asked a lot of questions about me, including asking for my age (which I thought was very strange - Do they practice ageism ?), Other questions like why I want to work in the company, without providing much information about the company itself. At the end, he asked me how much experiences I have in automated test. It's not even described in job post. Then he said he couldn't continue without having more experience with automation test. Though he didn't say how much is required, I suppose they are looking for at least 3 yrs. most likely 5 yrs. It seems they don't pay much for "regular" developers, and "seniors" need "a lot" of TDD testing automation experience, and even for seniors it doesn't seem very competitive. I got the impression their salary range for the role is about 63-90K EUR depending on seniority, and possibly also that you don't normally start as a high senior dev but have to grow into it inside the company. No bonuses, No stock options. They're looking for both software and tester but didn't mention anything about it in job description. It was a waste of time.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Why did you apply? What are you looking for in a company? Why us? Salary expectations? Notice Period?