N26 Interview Questions

Application

I applied through an employee referral. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at N26 (Berlin (Germany)) in July 2019.

Interview

The interview experience was great overall. What really stood out to me was how polite and nice was everyone from the beginning until the end of the recruiting process. While the interviews themselves where demanding in terms of questions and performance, the interviewers were always super nice.
The interview consisted of several rounds starting with an HR screening video call. The next round is an interview with the team and then you are asked to prepare a case study and submit it within a few days. If you are successful, the company invites you to their offices in Berlin for a series of interviews with the senior management.

Application

I applied online. The process took 5+ weeks. I interviewed at N26 (New York, NY) in January 2020.

Interview

Had a bizarre first phone screen with a frazzled recruiter, followed by an interview with the hiring manager and a homework assignment. The conversation with the hiring manager was informative and normal; however, the recruiter was terrible at communication and disappeared after I submitted the assignment.
If you're asking candidates to work for you for free, I suggest you return their emails.

Application

I applied online. The process took 5 weeks. I interviewed at N26 (New York, NY) in August 2019.

Interview

The recruiter does not seem interested at all in providing a good experience to candidates. Neither do interviewers, I asked two questions about the company and their processes and they said that they did not know the answer. My expectaction was that they could look it up and get back to me through an email, but they just did not care.

I reached the 4th stage of the process(out of 5), even though I live in the same city I did not get to meet the team in Barcelona in any of the interviews, everything was remote from Berlin, which makes me think that on the day to day everything depends on Berlin.

To be fair I think I did pretty well on the theoretical interview but I got rejected.

I applied for a generic SWE but got placed in US Market, and no engineer was able to explain me what this team is about.

Lots of things to improve, I think even if I got an offer I would not have accepted.

Application

I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at N26 (New York, NY).

Interview

Meh interview experience. Some good, some bad, with a touch of negative. If you want interview experience, go for it, but their pay is not that competitive so if you're short on time then I probably wouldn't recommend interviewing here.

1. Phone Screen - Standard Leetcode Medium. Pretty standard phone screen. What was positive is that some startups or companies have you do multiple phone screens but they bring you onsite after one. Cordial interviewer, too.

Overall, My opinions about the company were mixed after the onsite. If you're looking for the layout, I'll go over that; if you're looking for a culture fit, I'll go over that as well.

2. Onsite Round Layout

- The layout is one Coding, one System Design, and two chats with PMs about your work.

- The coding was more OO design. A common problem you could find on Grokking the System Design or System Design Primer. You might get Leetcode but also prep for some OO design.

- The System Design was something you could find in a similar reference as the previous question.

- The 2 PMs just asked you about experience, what you bring to the table, and what your work style was like.

3. General Conclusion/Thoughts after the Onsite - It's mixed. A lot of these problems are with NYC startups in general and not N26, which is why I stay away from startups usually.

- Recruiters were great. If these were the people I was working with day-to-day on the product then it'd be nothing but positive reviews from me. N26 knows how to hire people-people in this position.

- "Hey, let's pay you less money than you're making now but have an arbitrarily higher bar. You're also sitting on multiple offers from more reputable companies that pay more, but we won't budge!" In their defense, startups have to be pickier to stay agile/efficient, but it's still a waste of time for everyone if you're looking for competitive compensation.

- "Hey, we want that tech company talent, but we're also going to not follow the tech company format and do our own thing!" I don't remember the last time I received an OO design problem. I can count on one hand how many I've received in the last few years. Most companies will follow the standard Leetcode + System Design + maybe 1 PM fit. It's a waste of my time to study OO design when maybe 1 in 15 companies (usually a startup) will ask this question so it's best for me to focus on coding questions. Though, I'm glad they had more PM interviews if they were looking for culture fit.

- General Feel of the Interview - There was a lot of animosity bleeding from the interviewers about the company or about other employees when they were answering the questions I had. Animosity that made me question if I wanted to work here. I won't make things too ad hominem, but the software engineers sort of carried that software engineer personality, i.e. not too sociable and not someone you want to collaborate with 8 hours a day.

Remember that interviewing is a 2-way street, and my bar is pretty simple: "Do I want to work here 8+ hours a day with these people?", the answer is no. Why would I when you get less pay than what you're making now, friction from current employees, and a generally scatterbrained interviewing process?

Application

I applied online. The process took 2+ months. I interviewed at N26 (New York, NY) in June 2019.

Interview

I applied to N26 NYC's office Business Operations position and shortly after got confirmation from HR representative that they would like to schedule a 30 minute call. During the call, the HR Representative stated that my experience was more aligned to a senior role and we discussed the new job's description and responsibility.

After the call, she agreed that I would be a good fit and scheduled a call with a Senior representative from the "Bank" a week after. It was an hour video conference call where I discussed my experience and answered typical behavior question.

After the VC, they went silent for 3 weeks and when I heard from the HR, they stated that "it seems you are a better fit for this other role that I'm getting approval". After 5 weeks, they sent me a new job description and asked me how it "fits" and at this point I already had offers and final round for other companies so I declined/withdrew my position.

Overall: For a company, they seem to have 2/3 HR individuals and seem "always busy". Throughout the process, I've had to constantly chase them up for updates and status. Lastly, I was extremely transparent on my process with other firms and status - however they asked me if I could delay the process to ensure that I could fit N26's timeline (which I got extremely frustrated). Since this is a start-up with no developed recruitment process, be prepared to be stringed along with constantly changing processes.

Application

I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 days. I interviewed at N26 (New York, NY).

Interview

A recruiter approached me on LinkedIn about the position. Had a video interview shortly after that. The first impression was not good as she showed up 10 minutes late for a 20 minutes interview. I normally have a positive experience with the recruiters and this one was definitely not one of them.

Application

I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at N26 (New York, NY) in April 2019.

Interview

An online code challenge, a take home project, a phone screen interview.
The take home project will ask you to build an Application with certain requirements. It will take you about 16 hours. And they will deadline it in 4 days upon receiving the email. So, you will have to sacrifice your weekday nights or weekends for it.
In the video interview, they will ask about the take home project. But the interviewer I met, is a very unpleasant person. He started with: "We don't check people's submitted code before interview. I'm going to look into it right now." I mean, I spend the whole weekend for this, and you don't even bother to prepare your questions for it.
As a consequence, he asked question like: why you request BitCoin data every 60 seconds?
(Ask for BitCoin data every 60 seconds is a project requirement)
So unprofessional.

Application

I applied online. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at N26 in April 2019.

Interview

I got an email from an automatic computer to schedule a google interview and scheduled a video interview. The interview lasted 30 minutes. I was told in advance with whom I would be interviewing.

Application

I applied through a recruiter. The process took 4+ weeks. I interviewed at N26 (New York, NY) in March 2019.

Interview

I had a couple of calls with the recruiter, one call with the Performance Team from Berlin. Later on I had a robust assignment to complete at home within one week. I completed the task (wrote ~20-25 pages of in-depth strategy). The hiring team was impressed with it and I was the only candidate who passed to the next stage. Until that moment everything seemed fine. I had another call with the recruiter and I was being informed that they wanted to meet me in-person the next day in Berlin (!). I had to cancel and postpone two other recruitment processes to make it possible. The recruiter informed me she'd coordinate the flights with the external company. No one contacted me that day. I started getting anxious. On the departure day, until afternoon I still didn't even know if I’d be even flying out. Finally in the afternoon I was given a chance to book a flight for that evening. I landed in Berlin late at night without any information whom I’d be meeting, where and at what time should I show up. My level of stress was already pretty high… I finally got the answer with misguiding information about the people I was supposed to meet, the time of the interview was also confused. The next day I arrived at the office feeling people were pretty stressed there, but I was hoping it was just an impression… I had 3 rushed interviews, one after another. After, I’ve contacted recruiter and she promised me to get back to me once she’d receive the feedback. I’ve sent thank you emails to the team leaders I’ve met in Berlin and I’ve never heard a single word back from them. Not even a thank you rejection email. I followed up a few times without any luck. I felt it was extremely disrespectul and unprofessional after all the investment I’ve put in this process. I ended up losing two other job opportunities (I had some meetings and deadlines during that time). After 2 weeks of silence I’ve received a form from the external company asking about my recruitment experience. That also didn’t help getting any feedback from N26.

Application

I applied through an employee referral. I interviewed at N26 (New York, NY) in March 2019.

Interview

The interview process was efficient and smooth. I was prepared every step of the way by the recruiter. It started with a phone screen with their first NY recruiter then followed by a series of conversations with stakeholders from Berlin HQ. Most calls were done via google hangouts.

Application

I applied online. The process took 4+ weeks. I interviewed at N26 (New York, NY) in February 2019.

Interview

I had a wonderful interview at N26. The interviewer was very personal and helpful. I did not accept the position but I made a great network connection at N26. N26 has by far been the best interview process I have ever experienced.