Nationale-Nederlanden Interview Questions
& Process

It was an intensive but good interview process. I had the chance to chat with current trainees and recruiters. There was a presentation from previous trainees and department leaders, where we discussed our experiences and the type of work trainees do and how they contribute to their teams. It was great to see people from diverse backgrounds, not just finance. This process helped broaden my goals and what I can learn for my skillset.

So first HR reached out to set up the initial interviews. The first one was with the hiring manager and another data scientist. Then, I had this case study to complete within 3 hours. The next day, we had a debrief session for the case with the hiring manager and the data science guild lead. The last round was a deep dive into my previous roles and a live coding session where I had to read and parse JSON.

I had an initial recruiter call, then a technical interview with a team member that had several parts, and a final personal interview. I passed the first two but was rejected at the last one without explanation. The whole process took almost two months from application. I think candidates deserve at least some feedback after dedicating time and pausing their job search to focus on a specific company. They implied they have a strong company culture, but their handling of candidates in this situation showed me otherwise.

Later, I had an interview with the IT lead at their offices in Spain. It was a technical interview, and I had to reschedule it at first. The recruiter tried to make me feel guilty about it, saying that rescheduling would look unprofessional because all teams are international. In this interview, I noticed a lot of bad habits, like not understanding that I was still working and acting superior, like they owned me from the start. Despite the red flags, I went to the interview with two technicians. They were nice, but they messed up the interview with bad instructions. They asked me to bring a personal project ready to work with TypeScript and conduct the whole interview in English, describing my project. During the interview, they asked me to create a new file to start from scratch with TypeScript, but they stopped me before I could set it up. So, in a JavaScript file, I made an API call they provided and wrote the TypeScript code within that JavaScript file. My plan was to implement the TypeScript setup after writing the code, as they requested. However, they didn't allow me to due to time constraints, so I had to write half the code, delete it, and start over because the interviewers' instructions were unclear. Midway through, they said I could use ChatGPT without any problem. By the end, I wrote functional code that received nested objects in an array of objects. Even though the code worked, the feedback was that I wrote code I didn't understand (because I first did it in TypeScript and then had to redo it in JavaScript due to interviewer interference) and they criticized me for using AI, which THEY suggested. In the end, both the recruiter and the technicians were disrespectful, typical of selection processes run by people with huge egos who think they're the only ones who know how to program. They used me, hindered my work, and disrespected me multiple times. This is the kind of interview where if you pass, you're accepted, but if you don't, they insult you and treat you horribly. My recommendation is to fix this by getting candidate feedback to the managers to ensure the process is transparent, respectful, and treats interviewees well. It's important to clarify that pretending to be a top-tier company and then insulting candidates they don't consider suitable is typical of banana republics and incompetent companies. Top talent is in Silicon Valley, not in an insurance company. Get over yourselves.