I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Rakuten (Tokyo) in Apr 2018
Interview
Applied online. First did an online coding interview, and a recording of my answers to a few basic questions. Then they asked me to send them a presentation with my background and relevance to Rakuten. After that, they scheduled a Skype interview, but I didn't proceed beyond it. I thought the Skype interview actually went well and was surprised to have been turned down, considering I was only asked general questions and yet my background is well matched with their current research projects.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Why do you want to work at Rakuten? Very basic questions. Especially during the Skype interview, I was asked nothing relevant to my background or the job I would be doing, or even the business. Just generic questions like where do you see yourself in 5 years? Why do you want to work at Rakuten? What's your worst quality??????
The process took 2 months. I interviewed at Rakuten
Interview
I had a first screening interview after ~3 weeks, and waited 4 weeks to pass the technical interview which has 2 sessions (each session 1h with a staff member). The way to schedule the interview was particularly not smooth and impractical. I had to exchange by emails to fix the dates and get confirmed.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
- Implement cross entropy without using defined function in torch
- Implement a data loader of large JSON text database in pytorch
- Questions about: difference between SFO and RL(HF), what consumes more of GPUs during the training of LLMs, and many other questions about parallel training
The interviewers seemed not too knowledgeable about their questions and likely asked an LLM to generate them. The answer that we discussed was divergent and did not convince me. Both interviewers were very unfriendly and not collaborative during the interview.
Long interview process, everything is automated by AI, so no HR to communicate with.
First round with hiring manager - technical discussions, and design choices.
Second round - coding in python loss function, linked list, sampling function, very algorithm related. Bootstraping techniques
Final round - discussion with hiring manager and director
Upon arriving for my interview, I was informed that HR had forgotten to include the interviewer in the meeting invite. They attributed this to a new HR system implemented six months earlier. While the issue was acknowledged, it impacted the overall experience.