The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Instacart (San Francisco, CA) in Feb 2018
Interview
Recruiter reached out to me via linkedin and got an interview invitation.
First run technical screen is to write a SQL. Not hard.
The second run of data modeling challenge is totally wasting my time. It consisted of two tasks: data modeling and programming.
I spent half of day to complete and then got rejected.
The hire manager get back to me saying I did not consider the flexibility that enables the flexible data exploration. But he did explain how is the flexibility he really want.
There's not even clarification in the document that they want the model to be flexibility and how flexibility they want. They just let you make assumption in data modeling and then reject your if your assumption is not pleasing them.
Don't waste your time for this company.
It started from an invitation to complete 6 questions on CodeSignal and took about 1.5 hour to complete. The topics include data schema, dbt, warehouse optimization, and SQL. SQL is at medium level.
Step 1) Call with technical recruiter for details about role and compensation
Step 2) Technical assessment advanced SQL question and advanced python
Step 3) Data Modeling about marketplace experience, 2 steps
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
They asked me an SQL question about delivering orders on time.
In general, I have a great experience during the interview process interacting with talented people.
- 1 hour online challenge - SQL queries
- 30 min phone call with the recruiter
- 12 Hour online challenge- Data processing
- 30 min call with hiring manager
- Onsite interview (in my case 5 main interviews 30-45 min mostly technical)
- Unfortunately in the third interview, I did not feel good about it as the interviewer was little aggressive about asking questions as he wants to disqualify me which has impacted that round and the following two rounds. Recruiters were great during the whole process.
