I recently went through Nova Credit’s interview process, and I can confidently say it was one of the most disappointing experiences I’ve had. The process was unnecessarily long and impersonal. It started with a take-home assignment, followed by an interview with a manager, then a technical interview involving a simple algorithm question on parsing JSON data. After that, I proceeded to the final round, which consisted of four back-to-back interviews: two behavioral/project reviews, a system design discussion, and a final conversation with the CTO. While some people were pleasant, others were outright unprofessional. A major red flag appeared early when the hiring manager attempted to use an anchoring technique to lower my salary expectations during our first conversation. During the onsite interviews, the behavioral rounds felt completely mechanical—interviewers were simply reading pre-written questions from a document, showing little engagement with me as a candidate. One interviewer frequently interrupted me while I was responding, making the conversation feel rushed and dismissive. The biggest red flag was the CTO. Instead of being engaged in our conversation, he spent most of the time multitasking, checking his phone, and answering messages. It was clear he was barely paying attention and was just reading off a list of questions without any real interest in my responses. This entire process made it clear to me that Nova Credit does not prioritize a positive candidate experience. The lack of genuine engagement, the dismissive behavior from some interviewers, and the obvious attempts to lowball salary expectations make me strongly caution others against applying. I won’t be pursuing any opportunities with them in the future, and I wouldn’t recommend them to anyone else either.

30 minute interview w/ a senior “leader” who kept asking questions back-to-back without giving any room for pauses and kept pressing on time. Questions were irrelevant to the role and didn't seem to gauge engineering pragmatism or experience. Consequently, I never got a chance to ask the important questions about their customers, product, current strategy, runway, engineering culture, etc. all of which are 🔑 for any professional looking to join a start-up. An interview is a two-way street and the start of an employer/employee relationship. Would expect more from individuals in senior leadership positions and it seems like they don’t have it together here 🚩. Talented engineers should look elsewhere.