The first interview was with the recruiter - Screening. There were general questions about experience, as well as technical questions too. The interviewer was positive and friendly. So I had a good impression.
The second interview was Live Coding - in my case, it was URL Shortener.
The interviewer was moody from the very beginning of the interview. I even didn't get the task yet but I already knew that I wouldn't pass to the next round just because of his attitude.
A year ago (July 2024) I was interviewed in Revolut too, and I had a very nice experience and I passed the ”Live coding” stage successfully. The interviewer was fully involved in the process, guided it, answered my questions and was very positive. At the end, he made screenshots of my code. And it's a really good decision because it gives some confidence that feedback would be justified and objective (either it’s positive or negative) with screenshots as evidence.
This time (July 2025) it was quite the contrary. The interviewer wasn’t involved at all. It looked like I disturbed him with my interview from something else more important for him. I had to guide my interview by myself. When I was done with the first method I stopped to wait for his instructions whether to proceed with tests or with another method. But he was silent. So after waiting some time in complete silence, I asked him directly if I needed to write tests now. And he said “Ah, yeah, let’s write tests.” Like he was sleeping and I suddenly awakened him by my question. It’s not my job to remind the interviewer that we need to stop and to write some tests. Why do I need to control the interview process?
Then I proposed to add some validations for input value to the method. But he ignored it. I asked about it several times but he kept ignoring it. In feedback he said “No validations were added”. Seriously? I asked you several times if I could add it because there were no explicit requirements, so it was just my proposal, nothing more. If you ignore my question several times I consider it as “No”. I don’t read minds. You either provide clear requirements or you appreciate proactiveness and reply to answer in a timely manner. Validations are all about business rules - and its part of requirements which are the responsibility of the interviewer. I can put down a bunch of validations and still don't guess what is on the interviewer's mind. Also, we have only 1 hour, so we really don’t need to add all possible validations, and that' s why they should be told by the interviewer explicitly. If the candidate didn’t even mention the possibility to add validation - it’s one story. But if the candidate proposed to add validations by himself and asked you what validations exactly to put - it’s completely another story.
All in all, there was a lack of requirements and I had to clarify them several times. But eventually, in the feedback I was blamed for not being attentive to details and not implementing all requirements some of which were not even communicated to me. Whereas I covered all cases in tests and noticed a lack of requirements, and asked him about it, but as far as he was distracted by something else he didn’t notice it. It was not me who was not attentive but it was the interviewer himself who wasn’t attentive and not involved.
It’s like providing a review for a book which you have never read.
Also, the interviewer failed to evaluate the time complexity of my solution. And he wrote in the feedback that it was me who didn’t provide the correct answer (which is not true).
Seems like he wrote his feedback sitting in front of the mirror and describing himself during the interview. Nothing to do with my real answers.
I already read at least one review on Glassdore about Revolut interview where the candidate was blamed in the feedback for not telling something during the interview, which was actually told by the candidate during the interview. This happened to me too.
My interviewer didn’t take any screenshots of my code… Yeah, it’s very convenient if you don’t want the candidate to pass to the next stage, as it gives you a lot of space for manipulations in the feedback.
