Ten red flags that Revolut's CEO hates when hiring engineers
Getting into Revolut isn't easy. The app-based bank is inundated with applicants. Last year it received 1.6m applications and only increased headcount by 1,981 people. If you're applying, there are plenty of ways to stand out; not all of them are good. Revolut's sister firm just revealed what some of those less favourable characteristics are.
QuantumLight, the quantitative VC firm founded by Revolut CEO Nik Storonsky, recently released a hiring playbook, having raised $250m this week to invest in budding startups. The playbook, which aims to give advice to startups as they scale up, offers advice from QuantumLight on how to hire data engineers.
It's not clear whether the techniques it details are applied at Revolut, but the playbook was co-authored by Storonsky and frequently references how hiring happens there, so we assume it is. For example, QuantumLight advocates "tapping into remote, high-density talent regions." In this way, it says Revolut was able scale its engineering team "at a fraction of the cost of hiring in London or San Francisco."
QuantumLight says engineers are universally "expected to meet a high bar for software fundamentals, covering system design, code quality, and understanding of the full development lifecycle." While specialist roles require experience in specialist technologies, QuantumLight says those skills "build on this foundation but do not replace it."
When QuantumLight is hiring data engineers, it says there are seven minimum requirements, eleven "good to have" characteristics, and six "red flags" in its CV screening process. The good to haves are mostly specific to data engineering; the red flags are more universal.
The red flags in CV screening:
1. A Low GPA
2. Slow Career Progression
3. Frequent Change of Jobs
4. No End-to-end Development Experience
5. Experience in only one programming language.
6. Working in a slow-paced environment.
So what is QuantumLight looking for? Experience across a broad range of technologies will give you an edge. The data engineer screening guidelines list two programming languages and more than 20 other technologies, frameworks and methodologies including Data Mesh principles, ETL design and Kubernetes. It includes both Python and SQL experience in its minimum requirements. All of the above are mentioned in a current job opening for a data engineer at Revolut, too.
More broadly, the playbook says candidates need to have a computer science education. To stand out, they should have experience in a startup and/or evidence of their "ability to write easily understandable and maintainable code in multiple programming languages." Startup experience might not be as necessary at Revolut today due to its size, but some listings in its data team require you to have worked in a "scaling organization."
If your CV makes it past the screening process, you'll also have to go through a screening call, in which applicants are allocated a score.
Quantumlight describes red flags in these calls as "vague responses, blame-shifting, low curiosity, low ownership or clear values misalignment." In an example scorecard (for a product owner), Quantumlight gave another four examples:
7. Complaining about your current role.
8. Being more interested in compensation.
9. Misalignment in seniority expectations.
10. Failing to quantify achievements.
You'll need a final score of at least four points to succeed at this stage. In the example scorecard, the candidate scored points for "demonstrat[ing] mindfulness about KPIs," and "quantif[ying] achievements."
If you've made it past the screening process, you've got a long way to go before you get the job. The playbook advises for three more rounds of interviews afterwards; a 45-minute problem-solving interview using "unfamiliar, ambiguous" case studies, a 60-minute technical interview and a 60-minute "bar raiser" interview to assess cultural fit. At Revolut, the interview process for engineers can be even longer than this; recruiters at the fintech have previously mentioned you might face a 60-minute system design interview involving an applied technical challenge.
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