I knew from the beginning that the Revolut hiring process was quite peculiar. As a company, they do not demonstrate any values toward candidates. They are notorious for not responding to emails, and many people I know have gotten lost in the process without receiving any response or feedback. Their philosophy seems to be: as soon as a candidate fails to pass a round, they cease to exist.
Nonetheless, I have always been a Revolut user, a fan of the product, and someone who has invited many new users to download the app. This is why I decided to pursue an opportunity at Revolut. The process involved the following steps:
1. Online assessment: A 20-minute test with 40 straightforward questions covering logic, math, and data.
2. HR interview: The recruiter appeared uninterested in what I was saying. I advanced to the next step. The HR representative informed me that I would receive an email to book the "famous" problem-solving interview the next working day. However, they disappeared for 10 days and didn’t respond to any of my emails. Eventually, another recruiter stepped in and sent me a confirmation email, behaving as if nothing unusual had happened.
3. Problem-solving interview: Before this step, I had a 15-minute preparation call with the same recruiter from the HR interview. She listed categories of questions I needed to prepare for, which resembled traditional consulting questions. Most of them involved analyzing a specific process, such as streamlining the hiring process or improving user onboarding. Each question included a KPI to optimize, such as time to hire, hiring conversion rate, or onboarding success rate. I prepared thoroughly for these questions. The actual problem-solving interview turned out to be pretty different. It involved digital marketing metrics. The manager presented a spreadsheet containing CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) by country and asked me to determine why one country had high CAC. Fortunately, I had some knowledge in this area and performed well. The manager immediately told me I had passed. He mentioned that my CV was a good match for a specific Business Development role, so I was moved to the BD recruitment process.
4. Technical skills interview: I had another prep call before this step, this time with a different recruiter. They provided sample questions and reassured me that this interview would be easier than the problem-solving one. The interview took place the next day and was conducted by a senior manager based in India. He asked me two questions:
a) Tell me about your current job.
b) Describe a deal you’ve managed (at that time, I was working on deals in my company).
I felt my answers were accurate, but I also sensed that the interviewer didn’t particularly like me.
The following workday, I received a rejection without any feedback one day later. I attempted to contact the recruiting team to ask for a chance to re-enter the Strategy & Operations process, but none of the three recruiters included in the email thread responded. I even reached out to the senior manager directly (via LinkedIn) to request feedback (as it was important for my personal growth), but I received no reply.
A well-known question at Revolut is how to optimize the hiring conversion rate between submitted CVs and hired candidates. My strong recommendation is to shift the focus away from conversion rates. Instead, Revolut should prioritize creating a healthy, communicative, responsive, and human-centric process, which would likely lead to an indirect but significant improvement in conversion rates ;)