The job description seems so good. It combines strong theoretical and intensive applied work. The job description is absolutely motivational. Well, it turned out it is so good to be true ! First, a phone interview lasted about 7 mins. Then it followed up by an email sounded like "we like you but prove you are a good candidate". So they gave me a statistical challenge and was asked to solve it in 24 hours. The modelling is so complicated (massive data set with complicated structure) and it can't be solved reasonably in 24 hours. Well, I provided a solution. I spent more than 17 hours trying to solve the problem. However, I discovered later on that all they do is to gather vast statistical ideas from talented statisticians across the country with promise of hiring. The position has been listed for more than 7 months. Maybe their statisticians are too mediocre to come up with their own ideas (so why not use some cheap and free labor). They made it look like a competition who has the least mean squared error wins!. But it seems they give different problems to job seekers ! Anyway, they wanted to call me back to discuss my solution. It took them 4 weeks , after they canceled me 3-4 times, to set up 30 mins interview with their statisticians !. Above all they were so aggressive and not friendly at all. They didn't even make a single nice comment for the whole time. The interview was about me teaching them my solution and other statistical methodologies ( Free tutoring basically. Who needs textbooks anymore) My advice for you is to accept the challenge. Give them a solution on an excel sheet or word doc BUT don't give them your code or how you solved the problem or your methodology. Then ask for onsite interview if they need more details about your solution