Interview prep
Data Scientist interview questions
13 questions data scientists get asked, grouped by type. Under each one are the skills it is really testing, so you can pick a story from your own work that shows them.
Technical
- How do you design an experiment to test whether a new feature actually changes user behavior?Tests: experiment design, statistics
- How do you decide between a simple, interpretable model and a more complex one that scores slightly better on your validation set?Tests: model evaluation, judgment
- Describe a time your model performed well in validation but poorly once it was in use. What happened?Tests: model evaluation, debugging
- Walk me through how you approach a dataset with missing values, duplicate records and inconsistent formatting before you start analysis.Tests: data quality, judgment
Situational
- You find a bug in an analysis that already shaped a decision the business made months ago. What do you do?Tests: ownership, communication
- A stakeholder wants a single number that answers a question your data can only speak to with a range or a confidence level. How do you handle that?Tests: communication, statistics
- Two analyses answering the same business question produce different conclusions. How do you resolve it?Tests: judgment, communication
- You're asked to deliver a result by the end of the day that would normally take a week to do properly. What do you do?Tests: judgment, communication
Behavioral
- Tell me about a time you disagreed with a coworker and how you handled it.Tests: conflict resolution, communication
- Describe a project or task that did not go well and what you did about it.Tests: ownership, reflection
- Give an example of persuading someone to adopt an idea they initially resisted.Tests: influence, communication
- Walk me through how you decided what to work on when you had more requests than time.Tests: prioritisation, judgment
- Tell me about a time you had to learn something new quickly to get a job done.Tests: learning agility, ownership
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