KLM Interview Questions
& Process

I had a screening call with HR, then a remote call with the hiring manager where they told me more about the role. After that, I was given a technical data challenge to complete. Finally, I went in person to present my work and met the team and my future manager on site.

I was contacted by a headhunter about this Business Analyst position in Budapest. The role was actually quite different from what was initially described. The Hiring Manager mentioned that even though the official policy is one day in the office per week, they'd prefer more frequent presence. They decided not to move forward, saying I was 'too junior' for the responsibilities, which was surprising given they reached out and the offered salary fit a junior role.

This was by far the most inhuman interview experience I have ever had. At the time of my interview, I was attending a prestigious technical university in the US. After solving a small network optimization case study, I was invited for an online interview. The timeslot I was offered for the interview was at 5am in the morning (due to the time difference between Europe and US), and later that day I had to take a final exam for one of the tougher courses I had that semester. I kindly explained my situation and asked whether it would be possible to get another timeslot for the interview. To my surprise, I got the following response to my request: "This is the only timeslot we have, take it or leave it." Already there, an alarm bell already went of in my head... Yet, I decided to continue with the interview. I was told the interview would last around 45min to 1hour and that half of it would be spent discussing the case study I had solved prior to the interview, and the other half would cover more generic personal questions. On the day of the interview, I was ready in the virtual Zoom waiting room at 4:50am, but it was not until 5:05am that the KLM staff showed up. If you ask somebody to wake up at 4:30 in the morning, the least you could do is show up on time yourself... Once the interview started, I noticed that the HR lady was completely unprepared and had not looked at my CV at all... Finally, 25min into the interview, people started knocking on the windows of the glass cubicle the KLM team was sitting in. They told me the meeting room had been double booked, and therefore they had to close the call early. At that point, I was completely flabbergasted as they literally just hung up on me. No "Thank you", no "Goodbye", just a quick "We will call you tomorrow." The day after they called me, and surprise, surprise, I was not selected to go through to the next round. I asked them what the reason was for their decision, and all they said was that (1) I did not seem motivated and (2) I did not have enough coding experience... You can't even imagine how frustrated I was at that point. I think I showed enough motivation just by showing up to the interview at 5am in the first place. For (2), I solved the Network Optimization I was given in Python without any difficulties, but unfortunately, we didn't talk about the case study at all during the interview (I'm not even sure the HR person was aware I had to solve this case study prior to the interview). Besides that, they never asked me any questions on my coding experience or gave me any other coding assignments, so I have no idea where the HR person got the guts from to tell an engineering student he has too little coding experience. Despite the frustration, I was happy that I did not get an offer after this traumatizing experience. However, I did want to make sure my case was raised internally within KLM, as I could simply not accept the way I was treated. I wrote the VP of the department I applied to explain my situation. Long story short, KLM's HR and their recruiting process are a joke.

We start with your online application where you'll answer some motivation questions, not based on your CV, to get things rolling. If you pass that, you'll take some online tests, first an intelligence test, and if you do really well, then some personality tests. After that, there's a first interview, preferably at our Schiphol offices, mostly focusing on motivation and behavioral stuff. The final stage is an assessment day at the office, which includes a group activity, an individual activity, and a final interview. We'll also do a background check after that, and then hopefully, an offer!