If you are looking for a data scientist position for the first time, this blog post is for you! I will present here some tips that will help you to prepare better for professional and personal interviews. You will also find some effective methods to reduce stress and techniques that will help you to improve your performance in answering the questions.
In most of the interviews, there are known and unknown parts and I’ll discuss here how to deal with each of them. I can promise that you will probably use those techniques almost in every data science interview in the future. So, Let’s start!
Before the interview
Prior Knowledge
First, get as much information that you can before the in-person interview. The more information that you will acquire before, the less stress that you will feel in the interview itself. Before the in-person interview, companies usually get some information on the candidate by a short phone interview. Most of the phone interviews are focused on the algorithms that you know and a short background about yourself. You should take the advantage at the end of this interview to ask about the structure of the in-person interview (Do I need to go over on something specific? Do I need to bring a laptop? Is it a coding or a theoretical interview? Will I talk about my personal project? will it be more statistics oriented?).
Another way to reduce stress is by checking the LinkedIn profile of your interviewers. By knowing their background you will get a hint of the domain that they are going to focus on in the interview.
It is also really recommended to read articles about the company, understand their engagement and know their products. If the company works on some app, so download the app and play with it a bit.
Besides that, don’t forget also to solve all the questions on Glassdoor that are related to that company:)
Technical issues
If you have a video interview, check that you are connected to the internet and your speakers are working well. Try it before and don’t wait for the last moment! In addition, know a head of time where exactly are you going to sit and make sure nothing will disturb you (phone call or someone entering the room).
During the interview
General tips
You have just one hour to show what you’ve got, and it should be impressive enough for passing you to the next step. You need to be concentrated and full of motivation to work in this company. During the interview, try to show the interviewers open-minded and creative thinking.
Present your self-learning abilities and your independent personality.
If they asked you some questions that you don’t know the answer, first repeat the details of the question loudly. It will give you a bit more time to think about your answers. Sometimes you don’t understand the question properly so it’s a good way to find out if you missed something. Hide your stress and confusion by asking more understanding questions.
During the questions say loudly your thoughts, the interviewers will give you some hints and will direct you to the right answer. Don’t forget that the interviewers also want your success, because they also want to fill the position and stop interviewing candidates.
Don’t smile too much, it can interpret as a reason for a lack of knowledge.
It is important to answer the questions in some logical order that will get the attention of the interviewers. Your interviewers have many interviewees and your goal is to be special enough that they will remember you. One of the ways to do so, is to interest them and get their attention in each of your answers.
Talk on your project as you tell them a story, with a start middle and end. If you really love what you are doing, you will instill in them your passion to the domain.
Tell me about yourself
First, you need to understand that exactly like you, the interviewer has also a short attention, it means that you need to filter out any irrelevant information that is disconnected directly to the position. Your target is to convince him or her that you are the perfect person to this position and not anyone else just in one and a half minutes! Things like address, age, vegan, feminist are irrelevant for the professional estimation and thus you can filter them out.
In addition, It is also really important to talk about your history in a chronological order.
Don’t be humble, tell everything about yourself. You need to think like a salesman and to sell your skills and abilities to someone else that doesn’t know you at all. If you have participated in some program for excellent students you should empathize that even if you already wrote it in your resume. Probably the interviewers read many resumes every day and they don’t remember everything. You need to get an advantage over other interviewees and making those specialties stand out, will do the difference.
If you take an active part in the data science community, don’t hesitate to present it! It will be also really appreciative if you will indicate that you gave a lecture in some data science conference, you published some article in a considered journal, or you wrote some professional blog-post that affected the community.
Even if you just like to participate in meetups and you are a part of a few data science communities or if you read a specific professional blog on a weekly basis it will help you to emphasize your specialty compared to other candidates.
Talk about your data science project
If you have been asked to talk about a data science project that you have done, take it as free points! Why? First, This is your comfort zone! The person that knows this project the best is you! Second, you can get ready for this question at home! Write yourself some questions that you might be asked on and memorize the answers until you will say it fluently and confidently.
It is recommended to use the STAR method. Start with the “Situation” and give some background of your project. Then talk about the “Task” that you had to solve. Later, give some details on the “action” that you used to solve the problem. Finally, summarize the results and the conclusions.
Talk also about all the challenges that you had to deal with through the journey of the project and not just the bottom line of the last route that you chose. Share with them all of the difficulties that you had to cope with, the possible solutions that you could have used and why did you choose your solution. Don’t worry about wasting the interview time, if they will want to change the topic trust them that they will do that.
Do you have more questions?
Finally, you will be asked “Do you have more questions?” Always say yes! Of course that you came to the interview as an interviewee but in this part, you have the opportunity to change roles. You can examine if the position is really what you are looking for and if you have chemistry with the team (probably they are going to be one of your colleagues or team leaders). Through the questions that you will ask, they can also find out more sides in your personality like curiosity and if you are a team person or active in the community. Below, you can see some questions that I usually used to ask. You have a few options so each time you can choose those who are more relevant to the company.
- What projects does the team works on?
- Is there any project that the team is really proud of that promoted the company?
- Under which department am I going to work? R&D? AI?
- How often will I be working with other teams? Which teams?
- How often is the engagement of this role with model development vs data analysis?
- Each one in the team is responsible for a different part of the project or is it an end-to-end responsibility?
- How long the team exists in the company already?
- Will I work alone on the project?
- There is any promotion possibility from this position in the future?
- The members in the team give lectures\participate in conferences?
- How open is the company to new technologies?
- Python\R?
- Does the role include writing for production?
- What are the percentages of investment on research vs hands-on work?
- How common is it to share ideas and information in the team?
- Do you have stand-up\weekly meetings?
- How many people work in the team?
- What is the background of the people in the team?
- What are the challenges in this role?
- There are courses or workshops from time to time to learn new methods? Or open online courses that the team can learn by themselves?
End Notes
Use the information that you do have in advance to reduce the stress before the interview. As more as you will reduce the unknown parts in the interview the less stress that you will feel in the interview itself. Most of the interviews will have for sure the known parts, so prepare yourself beforehand to those parts. Take the advantage that you know what is going to happen in those parts to get at least 100% of the points.
In the unknown parts use the techniques that will help you to deal with the questions even if you don’t have a clue on the first moment.
I hope that you will take with you some of the tips from this blog-post and good luck in your next interview!
