120 interviews and one offer: How a Kazakhstani landed a job at Booking.com

The path to joining an international IT company doesn’t always start with a perfect resume and an immediate job offer. This article tells the story of Kazakh engineer Alibek Darbaev, who, after returning from the US, went through more than 100 technical interviews, faced rejections due to the lack of a work visa, and ultimately received an offer from Booking.com.

Alibek Datbayev, City — Amsterdam, AI Platform Engineering Manager at Booking.com, and Freedom Lifestyle Technology Advisor, LinkedIn

About Me

I was born and raised in an ordinary family in Pavlodar. I attended the "Zhas Daryn" school, where I became fascinated with mathematics and computer science. After graduating from high school, I enrolled in the Kazakhstan British Technical University (KBTU) in Almaty. There, I met my future wife and made close friends.

When I was studying, KBTU was one of the most prestigious and trendy universities. To this day, I consider it a strong institution in the IT field. For me, the university provided not only education but also an environment filled with advanced and active individuals. Most of my close friends are from KBTU. Many graduates work in Silicon Valley, Amazon, Google, and Facebook. I believe this is a great environment for IT professionals.

After graduating from university, I spent several years in Astana, engaging in entrepreneurship and creating online services, including food delivery and event ticket booking platforms.

In late 2013, I was invited to work in Silicon Valley. I moved to the US and worked there on a short-term work visa. After the visa expired and the employer did not renew the contract, I returned to Kazakhstan in 2015.

How I Joined Booking.com

After graduating from university, I spent several years in Astana engaging in entrepreneurship and creating online services. In late 2013, I was invited to work in Silicon Valley, where I worked on a short-term work visa.

After returning to Kazakhstan, I wanted to continue working abroad. I started submitting resumes to American companies and taking online interviews, mostly at night due to the time difference. The main difficulty was the lack of an H1B work visa—many companies rejected me for this reason. Therefore, over time, I began focusing on Europe.

In about three months, I went through more than 100 technical interviews, and if you count all interviews and meetings, there were about 120. Since the time difference with American companies was about 12 hours, interviews often took place at night. Sometimes I had them at 3 or 4 AM. At that time, I didn’t have children yet; we were newlyweds, so such a schedule was possible. My wife helped me: she was always nearby, brought tea and coffee, and supported me.

Ultimately, my participation in an online HackerRank competition sponsored by Booking.com helped me. I solved several problems, after which company recruiters contacted me.

Then the interview process began. First, I was given a take-home assignment, followed by several interviews. After that, I was invited to Booking.com’s headquarters in Amsterdam. The company paid for my flight and hotel for four days. In Amsterdam, I underwent a full interview process with various Booking.com employees, after which the company made a hiring decision. Three days later, I received an offer, and in February 2016, we moved to Amsterdam.

I also enjoyed traveling, so the opportunity to create products for millions of travelers was attractive to me. Additionally, I fell in love with Amsterdam as soon as I visited for the in-person interview. It was also important to me that the city is a major logistics hub with direct connections throughout Europe. This made it easy to travel to different countries and cities, and I wanted to see as many places as possible.

Work Features

Initially, at Booking.com, I worked as a backend developer, then I started doing frontend development as well. Over time, I transitioned into management, and my current role is quite different from where I started. I hardly code anymore and focus more on managerial tasks.

Currently, I work as an AI Platform Engineering Manager at Booking.com and lead the App Trip XP team. We create screens for iOS and Android that allow customers to manage their trips.

My main responsibilities include managing engineers, setting up processes for effective team performance, providing high-level technical leadership, interacting with stakeholders and product teams, resolving conflicts, as well as managing employee performance and career progression.

For the last four to five months, I have also been acting in the next career level. For example, recently I merged two work tracks into one and structured the teams so they became a unified whole. During this process, there were organizational changes, so it was necessary to assess risks and understand how to best build the new structure.

However, officially, I have not yet transitioned to this position. But I believe that for career growth and getting a promotion, it is important to start acting as if you are already in the new role. This is a universal rule: take on responsibilities expected at the next level. If you handle them successfully, it means you are already working at that level and are likely ready for a promotion.

I also believe that education does not end with university. Currently, at Booking.com, I am undergoing a significant educational process. There are many situations where you cannot immediately find a solution. You have to learn new things, acquire skills, and find common ground with people.

I am strongly against studying just for the sake of a diploma. If I were to go to university again, I might consider an MBA in the future, but for me, education is valuable primarily when it helps gain new knowledge and develop.

How I Searched for a Job 

When searching for a job, I tried to act systematically. I wrote down about 30 companies that I liked—either services I used or companies that were well-known. After that, I visited each company’s website, went to the Careers section, and looked for real job openings.

In total, I interviewed with more than 40 companies. For example, with Microsoft, I almost received an offer: I had a referral, I reached the final interview, but ultimately, no offer was made. However, I received feedback.

A large number of rejections helped me develop a sort of immunity to them at some point. At first, it can be tough, but when you go through many interviews and receive many rejections, you start to perceive them more calmly and no longer treat each rejection as something final. For me, this became part of the process that helped me keep moving forward.

Among my personal qualities, I would highlight sociability. I am quite good at communicating with people, so over time, I chose the management path rather than focusing solely on development.

Over time, I also realized the great value of networking. Previously, I was skeptical about it, but then I understood that it is indeed an important tool. Through connections, you can gain insights, early information, meet the right people, and quickly find someone who understands a specific issue.

Over the past few years, I have built a large network of contacts. For example, if a question arises in our track, people know they can ask me, and I will find the right person. I simply know who works on which product and who is best to contact for a specific issue.

The more you grow in engineering and management, the more important soft skills become compared to hard skills. Communicating with people, building connections, relationships, and networking start to play an increasingly significant role.

A systematic approach to finding opportunities is also important to me. A large number of attempts, a calm attitude toward rejections, and continuous learning ultimately helped me keep moving forward.

Challenges

When I first joined Booking.com, each developer had their own product segment and area of responsibility. I worked as a backend developer, and then I started doing frontend development as well.

Later, when I became a team lead, other challenges emerged. My team includes employees from different countries—Israel, Russia, India, the Netherlands, Brazil, and Slovenia. The company is international: only the IT department employs representatives of more than 100 nationalities.

For a manager, this is a significant challenge because everyone has different cultures, and each person requires an individual approach. I am responsible for employee growth, their personal and professional development, so it is important to understand how to work with each individual.

Another challenge for me was related to work culture. I grew up with an Eastern mindset, so it took me some time to get used to the fact that in Western work culture, it is normal to challenge and question decisions made by senior management.

At Booking.com, this is considered a healthy practice: you can challenge management if you have data that supports your position. It took me some time to learn this and apply such an approach in my work.

Transitioning into management brought another challenge—constant context switching. This is quite energy-intensive work because you have to switch from one project to another, from one communication to another, immerse yourself in different tasks, and interact with different people and teams.

For myself, I built a certain system in Notion. I use it as a personal to-do list and workspace. I have separate work streams, each with its own stakeholders, links to people’s pages, projects, tasks, statuses, priorities, and impact.

For example, if I open a page of a person I work with, I can see all the work streams associated with them. Each project is a separate page containing all the context, relevant links, what I need to do, status, and priority.

I try to minimize the need to constantly remember what exactly I need to do at any given moment. When you move into management, there are many instances of context switching, and this is indeed energy-intensive work. For me, this was a separate lesson: the cost of switching exists, it is high, but people do not always realize it.

3 Tips to Help You Find a Job in IT

1. Keep Learning

I am strongly against studying just for the sake of a diploma. In work, situations constantly arise where you cannot immediately find a solution, so you have to learn new things, develop skills, and learn to communicate effectively with people. Don’t wait too long for the right moment or try to become fully ready first—better to start acting and learn along the way.

2. Develop Communication and Networking Skills

As you grow in your career, soft skills become increasingly important compared to hard skills. Communicating with people, building connections, and maintaining relationships help you find the right people and open up new opportunities.

3. Systematically Search for Opportunities and Don’t Fear Rejections

Job searching can be turned into a systematic process: identify interesting companies, regularly monitor job openings, and don’t limit yourself to just a few attempts.

Rejections are a normal part of this process. The more attempts you make, the calmer you start to take them. The main thing is not to perceive each rejection as a final defeat and continue to look for suitable opportunities.

In my case, the combination of continuous learning, a systematic approach, and the willingness to try again after failures worked.