I applied through a staffing agency. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at Olam (Singapore) in Jan 2024
Interview
Literally the worst/most unprofessional interview experience I have had in my career by a big corporation. I was reached out by a headhunter for their Funds Service arm back in Dec 2023. It took them 1 month to schedule the first round interview. The second round was a one week take-home assignment which contains tasks about 1) data cleaning/modelling for a financial dataset, 2)real-time client-server architecture. I worked very hard for the assignment, trying to make the solutions better while juggling job. After 1+ weeks, they responded positively and scheduled a 3rd round. The 3rd round went smoothly with a senior engineer where the technical aspects of the assignment was discussed.
After that, they just GHOSTED me and my recruiter (like the other candidate on this review board)! They did not respond for 3 weeks after the 3rd interview. Only after chasing multiple times by my recruiter, they finally responded, saying that the role had been put on halt due to some management decision. Like WHAT? Why would you post the job for 3+ months only to eliminate it last minute? And why were the candidates ghosted without any proper communication? Until now (Oct), I have not received ANY communication from the HR. None of these made sense.
I mean no disrespect to the interviewers as they were nice and the assignment was fun. HOWEVER, to the HR and upper management, if you don't treat your candidates with respect, then prepare to get negative reviews.
To prospective candidates, be prepared to get a very unpleasant experience.
Interview questions [3]
Question 1
Create a database model to store a financial dataset. Explain the design approach, normalization etc.
Extremely unprofessional company. First interview was excellent. Then the next round was to do a 1 week assignment related to databases and client-server architecture. I work extremely hard for this assignment, I wait two weeks with no response, then they schedule an interview with me to discuss the assignment. Within 1 hour of the interview they postpone the interview to two days later, then two days later they just GHOST me. No one appears in the interview, the recruiter says the HR is not responding. And I never hear from the company AGAIN. What a waste of my time and energy.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Spark, Data modelling, Sql. Typical data engineer things.