Schibsted Devops Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

The interview process was quite thorough. It involved six interviews in total. Four of these were technical: General, DevOps, Coding, and Networking/Security. These were a bit challenging but went really well. The interviewers were really cool, and I got additional info during the process. There was also an HR chat at the beginning and a culture fit interview at the end. I got my application accepted after 4 weeks total, and received an offer 10 days after that.

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.

So I got contacted by a recruiter for this role, and after saying I was interested, I had a quick chat with an internal recruiter from Schibsted. They explained what they were looking for and laid out the process: there would be four interviews in total, covering different areas, before they make a decision. We planned to do the first two remotely. The night before the first interview, I got an email saying the interviewer had to reschedule. I managed to do the second interview, which was about data structures and algorithms (though I think I messed it up). The first interviewer, however, didn't even show up for the rescheduled slot. After waiting five days and trying to get some feedback or reschedule again, I was told they weren't moving forward with me for the other interviews. Honestly, I wouldn't want to work for a company that has such little respect for people's time.