I applied online. The process took 3 months. I interviewed at Rakuten (Tokyo) in Feb 2019
Interview
I have applied for rakuten in December 2018 and it took 3months for whole process. Initial 3(1+2) rounds were codility test and later two were interview, It was quite fun to solving these. After that two presentation rounds were there.
In first round manager wanted to know about background projects, experience and relevance to the applied post. Since I was told to make presentation relevant to certain fields so I made presentation targeting that but manager was from different domain. I guess Ist panel interviewer assigned to me was more relevant to my current profile and it seemed like I wanted to switch fields...
They shared two books for reading, I read one but recommended others to read for sure. Even if you got rejected you will learn very much from that and know about a journey of trillion yen company.
In next round my internet wasn't stable so it was like telephonic, presentation round. Interview panelists were very helpful and wanted to know about my projects. Other questions were relevant to my domain itself.
At last, Long journey came to end.
"1.01^365 = 37x"
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
which team you would like to Join? given a few options
this interview process had 5 rounds
2 was a tech test
３ were conversational in nature
with various managers from direct and indirect to the department manager mostly in Japan but also outside Japan.
1st Interview was simple leetcode task and some questions about Kubernetes. 2nd interview - classical ML and DL questions, Final interview is mostly informal, but there may appear some questions about specific experience and problem solving
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
What is the difference between random forest and boosting?
Initial LeetCode coding test, hiring manager interview for profile and role fit, multiple technical rounds covering statistics, machine learning, SQL, Python, and case studies, concluding with behavioral interviews evaluating teamwork, communication, and cultural alignment.