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      KAYAK

      Part of Booking Holdings

      Engaged employer

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      KAYAK interviewsKAYAK Junior Systems Analyst interviewsKAYAK interview


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      Junior Systems Analyst Interview

      22 Oct 2016
      Anonymous interview candidate
      No offer
      Negative experience
      Average interview

      Application

      I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at KAYAK in Jun 2016

      Interview

      I expected more from a company that likes to boast about how cutting edge they are and have a cool niche in the tech/travel space. Ultimately, my impression from the interview process was more stale than the air in a failing small town travel agency. The process started with a generic HR screening call; just the typical 'tell us about yourself' call to screen out total weirdos. It was fine and the internal recruiting person was pleasant enough. Pay scale was discussed at this point, which is another credit I will give them. The pay being offered for this position was pretty weak, even for an entry level IT analyst, due to the high costs of the area, but transparency on pay that early on is a big plus. I am still early in my career and am a fan of their service, so I was still interested in moving forward. One week later I was contacted for an in-person interview at their Stamford campus, scheduled for the next week. Good turn-around time. The facility itself is very cool, with brick, high ceilings, and a cool modern design with nods to aircrafts. It also felt very casual, with few people dressed in business attire. After waiting near the front desk for about 15 minutes from my arrival, I was whisked away to a conference room to begin the interviews. I consider the structure of the interview process here very inefficient. It was conducted as a series of 1-on-1 interviews with 4 different individuals in different roles. The all asked me almost identical questions from a list, and so the interview could have been wrapped up in about 40 minutes if they were all just in the same room. They did not even ask these questions from different perspectives or with any different twists or follow-ups. Instead, I had to repeat the same talking points about myself four times. The first person who interviewed me was in Switzerland via video conference on a huge screen. Be prepared for that, because I was not, and that format takes some adjustment. I was physically alone in the room, so there wasn't much I could do about the low volume audio on the other end. Also, it was awkward because the video was on a huge tv screen, with the individual appearing on the far corner. This meant that I either had to look at the camera near the other side of the screen, not seeing the person I was communicating with, or look at them but appear as though I was looking off to the other side of the room. This felt so disjointed and would have been better as a straight up phone call. However, this individual was the nicest and actually seemed interested in getting to know me as a candidate for the position. They asked about what kind of programming language I've used and projects I've worked on They are also the only person that gave me any kind of feedback about my experience and how it would be a fit for the position. Then I was brought into another room for the remaining interviews. As I said, it was all the same questions, but this time read from people who seemed entirely disinterested in being there or finding out much about me. I didn't receive any feedback from my answers. It was mostly a series of me giving a one-sided answer, them jotting down some notes, and then reading more questions. Nothing I was asked did a good job at gauging my technical skills. The only technical question asked was how to write a particular SQL query, and that only came up because I specifically brought it up, wanting to be vetted on my technical merit. There was no formal test given. Nor did they ask much to derive information about my personality. I mentioned how I love travelling and some of the places I've been, and there was no mutual discussion from this. Each interview had about a 15 minute gap where I was left in the empty room to twiddled my thumbs, waiting for the next person to greet me with a blank, bored expression on their face. After being there for three hours, I was simply told "Ok, well we just started the interview process" and sent on my way without any time-line for a follow-up from HR. It seems that the company feels entitled to be rude/cold to applicants because they have that tech start-up "cool factor" where the burden of impressions is on the applicant, but I have interviewed at way less "cool" places where the staff came off as polite and passionate about what they were doing. At this point I already had the sense that I was not going to get this position, and I was fine with that. I only wish they didn't draw the out to three hours when they were clearly disinterested in having me there from the beginning. The worst part of this experience is that they didn't bother to even send me a generic rejection email. This is a tech company that is literally in the business of automated email notifications (I get tons from them every week on new travel deals). A pretty lame interview.

      Interview questions [1]

      Question 1

      Talk about a time that you had something go wrong in a project you were working on.
      Answer question
      11