Schibsted Interview Questions
& Process

It was a 3 stage interview process. First was a soft call with a non-technical recruiter. Second was a technical call with 2 experienced developers. It was a comfortable atmosphere. They asked tricky questions like those found online, and I'm not sure what kind of software developer they were looking for. One developer described a database issue, but the other recruiter couldn't provide details because they didn't know what their colleague was asking. The entire call was about sticking to definitions, like a high school exam. If I used the same wording as on their papers, the answer was correct. The third call was with the manager, but I didn't reach this phase as I'm not good at memorizing definitions. TIP: if you want to pass the interview, learn definitions.

The whole thing had 4 steps. First, I talked with HR, just a quick chat. Then, I had a cultural interview with the Hiring Manager and Engineer Manager, it lasted about an hour. After that, they sent me a technical assignment, which was well-structured and explained. Finally, I had a technical interview with two senior software engineers where I had to explain my code and my approach. We also did some pair programming.

This interview process was a bit much. Started with HR, then a take-home coding assignment before any technical talks. Spent days on it. Then, two technical interviews: one with devs about mobile stuff (iOS for me) and the assignment, and another with an IT manager about IT basics. Didn't make it past that, so I don't know what else is involved, but it felt like more interviews were coming. The whole thing took about two weeks. It was a negative experience though, a lot of time invested only to get rejected for a silly reason. My take-home was praised, I even went above and beyond, but the instructions were super vague. It didn't mention unit tests at all, and the code was too small for many tests anyway. Then came two meetings with tons of questions. The feedback? Good knowledge, but the assignment lacked unit tests, so no go. Too much for an interview, honestly. Disappointing and a waste of my time.

So, it started off pretty well. I had my recruiter chat in late December and then the interviews kicked off in January. Initially, they told me there would be 5 interviews: an intro chat (30 mins, covering various topics), a 1.5-hour DevOps deep dive, a 1.5-hour coding session, a 1-hour security interview, and finally a 1-hour cultural fit discussion. However, after the cultural fit interview, they informed me there was a mix-up and a system design interview was actually needed. So, after that 6th interview, I had to wait two weeks for feedback, only to be told I needed to talk to the team leaders about my fit, which turned out to be another 1-hour interview focusing on CI/CD and other DevOps topics. After completing all 7 interviews (they mentioned 6 went well, but I disagree with their assessment of one), my application went to the hiring committee. Unfortunately, they decided against hiring me, citing that Schibsted had already filled two DevOps roles in London, even though I applied for the Barcelona position. It was a lot of time invested with no success, which was pretty disappointing, especially after being so excited at first. The whole experience from the 5th interview onwards felt like a bit of a waste of time for everyone involved due to poor communication and a questionable reason for rejection.