The first step was a written IQ test. The test was purely non-verbal, consisting of one section with the usual pattern-recognition questions, then two sections involving predicting the results of two types of workflows consisting of operations that transform and rearrange symbols. The rest of the interview process was pure farce. At no point was my technical ability tested in any manner. At my first on-site interview, I was asked whether I had worked with various specific technologies, but there were no follow-up questions testing my knowledge of them. Then the interviewer asked me what I wanted to do (i.e. what position). This was a surprise to me, because I was under the impression that I was already applying for a specific position. Furthermore, he asked me this question out of the blue, without first describing what other positions were available. Bit by bit, like pulling teeth, I managed to extract just enough information to make a marginally informed choice. At the end, the interviewer told me that I passed and that they wanted to schedule another interview, which I thought was nice (but wait!) I was then called in for a second interview two weeks later. The interviewer asked me a single technical question: "What is efficiency?" I gave all the obvious answers, but ultimately it turned out that what he was looking for was a description of the company's approach to service-oriented architecture. After about twenty minutes of guiding me to that, he asked me again what efficiency was. I had no idea how to answer this in any way I hadn't already. Then he asked me what I wanted to do. Yes, that issue we settled in the first interview. Again, bit by bit, I extracted information about the available positions, and got a completely different picture from what I had been given at the first interview. Ultimately, I was able to determine that one of the positions would require relocation to Singapore, and for the other one, extensive knowledge of a technology with which I'm not familiar (and had not been asked about earlier) was a hard requirement. However, there was a third position available under a different hiring manager, so we agreed that I would come back for another interview with that hiring manager at a later date. The next day I got a call from the recruiter who had introduced me to the company, and he told me that while they thought my technical skills (which they had not evaluated in any meaningful way) were strong, they would not be continuing with the interviewing process due to my poor communication skills. I've been in the software industry for over 15 years, and a) communication has never been a problem for me, b) the communication skills of the interviewers themselves left a great deal to be desired, as described above. If it weren't for Rakuten, this would be hands-down the worst interview I've ever had. Feel free to check my history; I don't write a negative review every time I don't get an offer. This one was just so awful that I had to tell the world. I guess there's no real actionable takeaway here. Apparently they pay fairly well by Japanese standards, so you shouldn't not apply just because they're terrible at interviewing. The only advice I can give is to really push to get as much information as you can about all the positions you're interviewing for ahead of time so that you're not put on the spot during the interview like I was.