Rakuten Interview Questions
& Process

The interview process consisted of two rounds. The first round involved fundamental questions covering Data Structures and Algorithms (DSA), Object-Oriented Programming (OOPS), and Operating Systems (OS). The second round focused on discussing my personal interests, my preferred technology stack, and my previous projects. No HR round was conducted. The offered stipend was ₹25,000 per month.

There were quite a few interview rounds, and I got ready using Mikitani-san’s Five Principles to get a better handle on the company culture. The first round was with the regional manager, then rounds two through four were with Japanese managers at HQ, and the last round was with HR. It took about two months, which was a pretty long time.

There were way too many rounds, some questions really weren't related to the role or job description at all. The interview had 4 technical interviews split into 2 sessions. 3 of them were okay: 1) general ML stuff verbally, 2) a deep dive into Kubernetes, and 3) system design. But the last one, 4) low-level Python, was weird (you could ask, but it should be in the JD, and these questions had nothing to do with ML or MLOps).

It was a pretty bad experience overall. I had two interviewers, neither of whom were HR. One was easy to talk to, but the other struggled with English, making it hard for them to communicate, to the point I considered switching to Japanese even though that's supposedly the company's internal language. They didn't understand some of my questions even after I rephrased and gave examples. They mostly asked generic behavioral questions they were clearly reading from a script, like 'What inspires you?', 'What makes you happy?', 'What are your ambitions?', and 'What tech do you want to learn?'. Only one question seemed potentially related to my CV, but it might have been a coincidence. They barely discussed their team or the product. I ended up asking them more questions than they asked me, which might be why I didn't move forward. Then they ghosted me, which is the opposite of how it should be. They didn't even send a rejection, even after I followed up, which makes me question how they treat their employees.