Data scientists hiring 'cheat sheet'

That's what I ask during interviews Posted by Lena Barinova on August 13, 2013 Know-how

I’ve been actively hiring people for 6 years now for different positions: developers, analysts, testers, managers.. My most recent experience - hiring Data scientists. Quite interesting new position we have opened in our company, so I had to create completely new questions for the interview.

Data scientists selection is over now and I want to share questions with you.

For inspiration I used “66 job interview questions for data scientists”, so some of my questions came from this blog.

Here comes my data scientists hiring “cheat sheet”:

  • What’s the biggest data set that you processed?
  • What is data science in your opinion?
  • What output you usually produce in your researches?
  • Did any of your predictions came true?
  • What programming languages do you use? Why?
  • Which data scientists do you admire most? Which startups? Do you follow some blogs, conferences? Name a couple.
  • Would you handle click data in real time? In what context? Why?
  • Are you familiar with software development life cycle? Where does data science fit in it?

The list is obviously not complete, and interview questions usually depend on overall conversation flow and every interview has it’s own scenario.

What “data scientist” questions do you ask during the interview?