After I had submitted my CV, HR of Booking.com called me and invited me to their Moscow office to take an Editing test. The preparation that they suggested (get familiar with Booking.com and check out their social networks) was not helpful at all. But thanks to Glassdoor.com, I could get a little bit familiar with the upcoming questions. I took the test split into five parts, and it took me 1,5 hours. A week after, they told me that I performed very well at the test and they wanted to follow me up with the next interview, which included a 'business case' and a Q&A.
Again, a week after I had an interview with a Team Lead of Partner Content Specialists and her colleague. The preparation for a role-play took me about 30 minutes, then there was a role-play itself, where I had to convince the Partner to make improvements on his hotel's Booking.com page. The rest of the interview (about 1 hour) was dedicated to my skills and how could I be useful for Booking.com. By the end of the interview, I asked them about the package, because during all these three weeks they didn't bother to tell me about the salary bracket and, obviously, it was already a right time to ask this question. The Team Lead told me that they were not supposed to discuss this information yet and she said I could ask about that during my next (!) interview.
It is ridiculous and very unprofessional for a company like Booking.com. They take your time (more than a month), get you all excited about the job and then refuse to tell you what salary you are actually going to expect for this job, they did not even drop a hint.
A week after the interview, HR called me and said that my English speaking skills very great and they appreciated my enthusiasm, but my 'influence skills were not good enough for this job'. I also thought that statement was rather weird. Because I strongly believe that you are not born with this skill, but you can develop it through actual work, but they decided that I do not deserve a chance. To be honest, the HR lady did ask me about my suggestions to improve their hiring service. Let's hope they will do something about it.
By the way, the lady working there as a Partner Content Specialist told me that they had been looking for a candidate for this position for a very long time. Now I understand why.