I applied in-person. I interviewed at Rakuten (Tóquio) in Jun 2016
Interview
first round will be online coding test, then an video interview about your understanding of the company's value.
Then three rounds of on-sites, with about 40mins each. Will involve coding, basic ML algorithms.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
How to deal with unbalanced data sets for Classification problem
I applied through a staffing agency. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Rakuten (Madrid) in Sep 2016
Interview
Very casual meeting with nice interviewers who transmitted familiarity and made me feel very comfortable. First we described our backgrounds and I had to talk about my cs degree, projects, previous job and then a cool cs problem took place and I had to solve it while explaining it to the interviewer on a notebook so they could check my algorithms skills. They explained very well what the were looking for. I enjoyed every minute of the interview, casual without losing formality.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
What would make you happy in the long term when it comes to the job?
Recruiter reached out to me on LinkedIn, scheduled a phone screening. We discussed my experience and the job description briefly at which point she began asking about my salary history. I gave a salary range I am expecting and said we can discuss salary when we both think I'm a good fit. The recruiter asked several more times for my salary history then said it was REQUIRED for an application. No employer that respects their talent would require this, so I thanked her for her time and asked her to contact me when the policy was changed.