I saw the job posting on LinkedIn, and decided to apply. Oddly enough, the posting was published by Willis Towers Watson (WTW), and made no mention of TRANZACT at all. Granted, WTW is the parent company, and I was told that TRANZACT's recruiting processes have been merged into WTW, but it still seemed deceptive. I had applied to work for WTW, thinking that it would be a more traditional insurance job within the company's main business units. TRANZACT, on the other hand, is a medicare broker, and I don't think I would have applied to the role had I known this fact. To me, it felt like TRANZACT recruiters were taking advantage of WTW's name recognition to lure candidates into a lesser role.
Nonetheless, I still proceeded with the interviews. The recruiter and the hiring manager were quite nice and had interesting things to share about the role. The hiring manager seemed new to the profession, specifically in regards to how one implements data science and analytics throughout an enterprise, but I would have loved to work with her anyways. In fact, she was so agreeable that I probably would have viewed her as a peer data scientist in addition to my direct manager.
Note that TRANZACT does require candidates to go through a technical, take-home assessment. This is highly unusual, as most employers just cover the technical requirements during the interview process itself. The assessment is very long, involving two separate datasets that require a significant amount of data cleaning and transformations. The model-building itself can be time consuming, due to the complexities of the problem statement.
I was busy working on projects at my current job, and also interviewing for other roles, so I really didn't devote much time to this take-home assessment. I did submit a report, with detailed descriptions of what I did, and what I would have done had I been given more time (remember, I had only a week). Unfortunately, it looks like they were looking for something specific, because they rejected me after I submitted the report. The recruiter mentioned that the hiring manager wanted me to do more work, but she seemed to have overlooked the fact that I explained the gaps in my report.
Overall, I had a "neutral" experience with this employer. I might consider them in the future, and I think this experience was very informative and enlightening.