PostNL Interview Questions
& Process

Had nice conversations with the manager and later also with someone in the same role. Unfortunately rejected after several assessments due to no match. The recruiter was also surprised, just like me. The objective criteria were met.

PostNL interviews involved coding tasks, contrary to what I was led to believe. My third interview was supposed to be about designing and coding an end-to-end RAG chatbot using AI, but this wasn't communicated beforehand. I was repeatedly told I'd be using online coding tools and wouldn't need to prepare, expecting something like a medium LeetCode problem. Instead, I had to share my screen in an IDE and use design tools, which I had to set up during the interview. I had to prompt them for requirements, as it seemed they didn't have a clear list. About 40 minutes in, they unexpectedly wanted me to use Langchain and provided documentation, also criticizing me for not having Copilot or other LLM plugins set up. It felt disorganized and unprofessional. The overall process included three calls: a recruiter, then a hiring manager and a principal data scientist, followed by two engineers. Additionally, there was a one-hour personality/IQ assessment.

The interview process involved 3 stages. The first stage was an introductory call to discuss your interests and experiences. The second stage focused on technical knowledge. You first completed an assignment, which was then discussed in this meeting. They asked about your reasoning behind certain build decisions. The third stage was a proposal discussion.

I applied and interviews were set up pretty quickly. PostNL seems to move fast when they like someone. The first interview was with the hiring manager and a product owner. It went well and led to a second interview. They both seemed nice and we connected personally. I didn't get the vibe they were a super strong PM organization though, felt like they used 'agile' more than they lived it. The second interview, which was the last one, was with a senior PM and a BA (their title is different but it seemed similar). The senior PM didn't impress me much – standard questions, no follow-ups, seemed uninterested. Not the kind of PM I'd want to learn from if I were less experienced; he didn't seem to know much about product discovery and felt more like a feature team player than someone focused on building the best product, which fit my impression from the first interview about PostNL's PM strength. After the second interview, I heard nothing, despite being told I'd get feedback within a week. I texted the recruiter, called him 3 times, and finally emailed the initial hiring managers about my bad experience. One of them apologized via email, saying holidays and overlapping life events caused the delay (over a month). She said she'd follow up on getting me feedback. It's been 3 weeks since then, and still nothing.