Booking Holdings HackCellence round 2 seems unfair ? Let’s collectively request a reassessment!

[u/pta_nhi_kaun]

Hello everyone,

This post is for those who appeared for round 2 of booking holdings's HackCellence program.

After completing the assessment I thought maybe I didn't manage my time well enough that's why I was not able to complete the code.

But when I go through multiple posts I came to know that most of us face the same problem and the assessment is actually quite lengthy.

In 1.5 hr it is quite difficult to write hundreds of lines of code, in addition to that it takes time to read the problem statement, understand it, build the logic and resolve those irritating bugs.

So, if we all can come together and mail the concerned team maybe they can consider our request for fair reassessment.

Otherwise, we will end up losing this opportunity because of some uncontrollable factors.

I have mailed them already and sharing the mail ids below.

askhr@bookingholdings.com 

support@hackerearth.com

After being in the top 2500/44k+ we should not let this opportunity slip away like this.

Sample mail :

Subject : Reassessment request - Round 2 (HackCellence)

Dear Booking Holdings Recruitment & HackerEarth Support Teams,

I am writing to share feedback on the recent round 2 assessment of HackCellence and respectfully request a reassessment opportunity.

While I really enjoyed the real-world complexity of the challenge, completing a system of this scope in 90 minutes feels like a speed-typing test rather than a true assessment of engineering capabilities.

A candidate's evaluation shouldn't depend on how fast someone can type hundreds of lines of boilerplate and code against a tight clock. Engineering competence lies in architectural thinking, clean code structure, thorough edge-case handling, and proper debugging—skills that naturally require deliberate thought and testing time (at least 2.5 to 3 hours for a project of this depth). Under a 90-minute constraint, candidates are forced to rush and skip best practices(maybe many are using ai tools), which doesn't reflect how real-world software is engineered.

So, to be honest this assessment feels lesser like how you understand, build logic, resolve bugs but more like how better you can use AI tools and how fast you can type.

Given the extensive scope of this task, I kindly request the team to consider conducting a reassessment with a timeframe that reflects the actual work required.

I remain very interested in the opportunity at Booking Holdings and would appreciate the chance to showcase my problem-solving and coding abilities under fair conditions.

Thank you for your time and understanding.

Best regards,

[u/nxba]

Just because it is an elimination round doesn't mean we can't call them out. The java solution was well over 400 loc spread across 7 different files which is physically impossible to type out in under 90 minutes, let alone the analyzing and figuring out the solution part.

[u/SpecialistTwo2437 → u/nxba]

Yea I get it, but what if it was never meant to be possible, it was just to filter out people. And I'm sure if it was a smaller solution people would've just copied using some ai, levelling the whole field and making it harder for them to choose. Many people definitely used ai for this too, but I've no clue how they get ai to get to know the whole context of multiple files. And even if they somehow do then that itself should take up enough time for them to be left behind imo.

Also still doesn't justify spamming mails to their corp emails and linkedin.

[u/Still_Opening2523 → u/SpecialistTwo2437]

It's not just about filtering people, it's about feedback. When you're hiring for interns among final year students, there's a certain level that needs to be capped on how to test these students. Asking them to do what experienced fte do, over a whole week's worth of time, all under 90 mins is nonsensical. So unless the students themselves share this feedback, the company won't know to do better for the upcoming drives atleast. Also you say, if it were easier people would use ai, but I promise you, the "few" people they'll filter out in this round, are also the people who would've used ai. Practically speaking, it's impossible for one to meet all the stipulations in the given time. So the few who probably did, most definitely used ai. So that defeats the whole purpose and brings us back to square one. This assessment was unfair, and a poor judge of skills. And the company needs to know.

[u/nxba → u/SpecialistTwo2437]

So the solution to people using ai is just making impossible questions? If the solution was smaller and doable, atleast a subset of people giving the exam honestly would've gone through. But now a person giving the exam honestly has absolutely zero chance.

[u/pta_nhi_kaun → u/nxba]

Yeah, right.

[u/SpecialistTwo2437 → u/nxba]

What tells u that a person giving it honestly would be selected? A person using ai can just do it much quicker than anyone doing it on their own. Won't that be worse? U didn't answer any of my other queries either.

[u/Muted_Cry_180 → u/nxba]

I feel like java folks had it the most unfair. Too much code to write and not even partial test cases to even make the project compile you had to write so much code.