The interview process was a mixed bag, but overall frustrating, unclear, and disrespectful of my time.
I was originally contacted by a recruiter while already in a full time position elsewhere and was not actively pursuing new opportunities. The role sounded interesting and the recruiter conversation was comfortable and informative so I decided to move forward with the process.
The next conversation was with the hiring manager. It was conversational, insightful, and felt very natural to discuss how the position and my experience aligned.
The 3rd interview is where the process fell off in quality. I was pressured by a member of the scheduling team to schedule back to back interviews during working hours at my current job. This covered 3 interviews in 4 days because I had meetings on day 3. This gave me minimal time to prep between interviews. I also received vague instructions on what the 3rd interview would actually consist of, even after asking follow up questions. All I knew is I would receive a csv at the beginning of the call and 30 minutes to answers a series of questions with no prep or prior direction. Of that 30 minute call about 15 minutes was spent receiving the file, using the only data tool available on my personal computer, a verbal description of all the fields, and verbal questions. I had to write the information down because it was provided so quickly that it was disorienting. Then in the remaining 15 minutes I had to provide an insight to answer the questions. This entire process felt rushed, not thought out, and more of a measurement of proficiency in a tool that isn’t used at the company and the ability to rapidly generate an insight with minimal thought or effort. This seemed tailored to less experienced junior analysts that are more focused on tools and surface level assumptions than experienced analysts. I think the hiring manager dropped the ball and may not have the best understanding in how to assess a candidate’s ability to follow the proper analysis steps to frame a business case, clean and transform the data, form a hypothesis, determine how to measure the hypothesis, and provide an action to perform next. A take home assessment and presentation would be a much better way to measure one’s analytic skillset.
