I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Revolut in Oct 2018
Interview
General interview and after sent tech task (quite standard: some data preparation + ordinary ML). It was quite simple for my level (I am highly skilled and experienced).
After some my additional questions about requirements (which were totally ignored) HR told me to use instructions in filename and only them.
After I submitted solution (extensive and solid one) I was quickly rejected without any solution discussion, additional questions or explanation. I was highly surprised and requested a feedback.
In it in passive-aggressive manner there are several points and comments a la "from a dozen possible ways to do thing you choose not the one I prefer and that's why It's completely wrong", and points in it that are not total nonsense were not specified in the requirements (although nonsense ones also were not). Although the quality of model and data preparation itself was not questioned.
Checking out again I found out that HR pointed out at the wrong filename with instructions! I have a lot of files in downloads and didn't noticed another one, suddenly there are two of them. My mistake but I definitely would not do it if not for those wrong directions.
However only 2 points from their report were covered by this newly discovered file (small tasks on basics, clearly from my resume I can do it). The other 5 remained or the same nonsense, or just non-obvious, unnecessary and in need to be clearly specified before if they want to see them in solution. Ha.
I tried to speak with HR about this situation and she didn't reply me, and also tried to contact with higher management with the same outcome.
I have some obvious thoughts of what happened. And no doubt this is one of the most indifferent and incompetent attitude to best talents I have ever seen.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Task on combinatorics during general interview. No communications during tech part.
I applied online. The process took 1 week. I interviewed at Revolut
Interview
30 minute phone call with a product owner. The interview was very basic and no advanced topics were covered on either Python, ML or data engineering. Actually thought the process went well but got rejected with no feedback.
I applied online. The process took 3 months. I interviewed at Revolut (Londen, Engeland) in May 2018
Interview
HR contacted me for the first time 4 months after I had initially applied. They said they liked my CV and invited me for an interview. They explained there would be an initial call, then a take home coding challenge, then 2 more Skype interviews.
The first call was basic stats / machine learning questions, the coding interview was to build a robust model and nice visualisation using a kaggle house price dataset, the final interviews were more technical and about my experience and why I wanted to join.
I learned a lot about the fintech startup industry and the coding challenge was really fun. My problem with the whole process is that my code from the challenge was never discussed at any stage (so I guess they just skimmed over it to see if I could pass to the next stage even though I spent a lot of time and effort on it). And secondly, in our very first call, HR asked me what my salary expectation is and when I told them they said that should be ok. When I got the offer though, the salary was £20k less then what I originally asked for. They could have saved us both a lot of time if they just said no at the beginning. Offer was for £45k per year with stock options.
Interview questions [3]
Question 1
If you have a binomial distribution with parameters a and b, what is the expected value?
You have a database of customer transactions and for some users you don’t have much data (1-2 transactions), and you want them to use Revolut’s services more. How would you analyse the data to do so, with such limited data on some users.