I applied online. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at Sixt (Lisbon, Lisbon District) in Apr 2025
Interview
I’m deeply disappointed by this hiring process. It felt completely disrespectful to the candidates. This is the first time I’ve had such a negative experience.
The process took nearly two months, during which I dedicated substantial time and effort to complete a detailed technical test. During the interview, the reviewer even said he appreciated my work and found it very good. Yet, I received only a generic rejection email with no feedback or explanation.
It gives the impression that candidates' time and contributions are not respected. Frankly, it raises the question of whether the company was genuinely hiring or simply collecting ideas from candidates’ tests to implement internally.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
The technical test focused on implementing a RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) system for Customer Support.
I applied through other source. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at Sixt in Jun 2021
Interview
* Screening by India Head for Data
-> will ask about background and theme of the projects
-> very sensible and to the point questions
* Take Home Assignment
-> a very interesting assignment - mostly to be returned in a 3-4 days time frame
* Technical Interview 1 -
This is supposed to be an interview where the first part is Walking thru the Assignment and Answering Questions
For me, the panel liked my assignment submission very much and did not ask any questions related to the assignment. We directly talked about the projects I did in the past. Talked about creating w2vec's, sample problem on split of top results vs trending results.
Very Interesting conversation and Casual.
* Technical Interview 2 - This interview is w/ a DS from Germany. The panel asked about projects in brief, and then moved to a case study of pricing. Specifically, asking questions to design an pricing strategy
* Interview by India Head of Data - By this time for me, I think the panel was pretty aligned and we closed this in 20 mins for a slot of 1 hour.
* Interview by Germany Head of Data - The conversation was more of projects that we did in the past. How would you define strategy for consumer products and like-wise. Felt like a decent conversation.
* Interview by HR Head :
For me this was also sorted, and had a 1 hour conversation which was more around working in mobility space, difference b/w Analytics and Science and so forth. Alignment of goals of mine v/s what the role had to offer
My Problem is that: The process took 5 weeks at least, with 3rd round rescheduled twice.
So a decent investment from my end as well.
Forget feedback, I didn't even receive an email saying, we have decided not to proceed w/ your candidature.
And this is ironical, because, the HR was rushing me to get the slots early in the week and I had limited availability so had to push it a couple of days ahead..
While the interview's definitely taught me something, and it was a great interaction w/ each of the panels, the closure of it is what I am severely disappointed in.
The DS team is good- they know stuff and are inspiring fellows(far more mature than what you see around, these are real Data Scientists!!), but the HR team is definitely not doing their job well.
EDIT:
I did get a call from HR - after 3 weeks, he did share feedback and finally had closure.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
* How does w2vec work?
* How does RF Regressor work?
* Diff b/w Bagging/Boosting/RF
* Design a pricing strategy
* How would you design a recommendation system for Popular vs Trending Results