loveholidays interview questions

The interview process was far too long and repetitive for the level of the role, with multiple rounds covering similar ground and involving overlapping interview panels. It created the impression of unclear decision-making and limited accountability. What stood out most was the imbalance between the significant time investment expected from candidates and the limited, non-actionable feedback provided. I was also surprised by the gap between the company's AI ambitions and some of the manual operational processes discussed during interviews. Finally, there was a strong emphasis on candidates having a clear and compelling story, yet the company itself struggled to present a consistent narrative around its strategy, priorities, and challenges. Hiring is a two-way process, and organisations should hold themselves to the same standard they expect from candidates. Overall, the process felt unnecessarily drawn out and would benefit from greater clarity, alignment, and respect for candidates' time.

HR screen, HM Interview with Head of Analytics, (would have been: Case Study & coming into office for Panel Discussion and meeting with VP). The recruiter gave me information on the HM interview, explicitly including the statement 'there will be no sql test, just a quick chat of ways of working with sql and dbt, and some questions about approaches'. I prepared for the interview like I would normally for an HM interview with this instruction. The person was lovely but they did not ask any 'Senior' questions in the interview and did not really probe or explore situations to check for leveling. The interviewer was very focused on asking me exact questions about my previous employment (e.g. 'describe the metrics you worked with at X company') instead of discussing projects/ways of working/approaches. I really didn't feel like there was much interest in diving deeper to get to know me and what I can bring to the company. Then they shared their screen to show me a sql test and asked me to write my code into the chat. I did state to them that this is a surprise to me as the recruiter said we would be talking about WoW with dbt/SQL and that there would be no test but of course we completed the test anyway. The test was a simple join and then window functions to filter on some row numbers and create a cumulative sum. I provided two solutions for the cumulative sum because the 'standard' way to assess this problem (with cumulative sum) in an interview is computationally heavy and expensive for large datasets, so I also explained the alternate way (creating a window CTE and then just filtering on x number rows, summing and group by). The interviewer tried to quickly rush me through this answer and basically cut me off after I typed one of the windows, when I checked that this was still okay they said 'yes I just needed to see you type these words' (?). I don't think they actually knew what they were looking at and were comparing to something on a sheet. After the interview I was ghosted for a week. I followed up and a few days later received an email that they interviewed many people and didn't proceed with me. Recruiter at least provided feedback, he claimed they are looking for someone with 'more experience working with SQL' and that they were looking for someone with 'further breadth of experience across our stack'. I have been working with dbt & in SQL for nearly 4 years, including 2 years for a large e-commerce website (so actually ticked all the boxes for both, stack and datatable types) and (I thought) we had discussed this in a good amount of detail in the interview, so this feedback felt disgenuine. I took probably a moment longer to understand what was written as I have ADHD & dyslexia, and I would have disclosed that if the recruiter had let me know that there would be something that I have to read, understand, and then type a response. Even considering of this, I don't agree that my behaviour would have shown that I needed 'more experience with SQL'. This is not only discriminatory but also a bit disrespectful to provide false information about the contents of an interview and then try to pin someone down on that, and even ghost them after. I was excited for this opportunity, especially because the recruiter was also very lovely. However, considering the way they 'assessed' the skills and how the process was handled I am under the impression that I dodged a bullet, and I would not apply for a role here again.