Ivy May 27, 2016 No Comments
You are hunting for a job and you ended up applying for a whole lot of Analytics jobs!
Whew! What next? Interview! Yes that’s what’s coming. Are you prepared?
At Ivy Pro School we have trained more than 10,000 candidates on Analytics. Our job doesn’t end there. We go all out to help them prepare for Placement tests and Interviews.
Based on our immense experience in this, let me give you some heads up on how to deal with an Analytics Interview.
Generally Interviewers are not looking for Mathematics gurus or Statistics geeks. They look at very basic traits in a candidate –
1.Structured thinking process
2.Problem Solving skills
3.Basic statistics knowledge
4.Comfort with application of Analytics tools
5.Business/domain knowledge
6.Flair for numbers
7.Communication skills
Any interview process to assess all the above includes
>>Written test– Checks Flair for numbers/ Basic statistics/ structured thinking. The pattern of these written tests may be similar to CAT/XAT or any of these MBA entrance tests with preferable topics being data Interpretation, Logical reasoning and Basic probability. SO if you can lay your hands on any CAT preparation books, it would help.
>>GD – Checks communication skills. Generally has around 6-7 people with judges judging you for your clarity of thought, communication skills and awareness. It goes without saying that participants should try to maintain decorum.
>>Interview – This is the trickiest part of the interview process. It checks almost all the required traits in a candidate with major focus on technical knowledge/comfort with analytics tools/problem solving skills and business knowledge.
–Be prepared with basic knowledge about the company’s operations and statistics
–Probability related questions
–Case study on analytics tools like SAS or R
–Resume related questions
The 5 tips to keep in mind during an Analytics Interview are:
1.Know how to handle Case Studies
a.The interviewer is not looking for the exact mathematical answers correct to the 4th decimal place! It’s the approach that you follow that will be judged. Take the Bottoms up or Top down approach to answer any problem.
b.Show your work on a piece of paper (with some tables/ assumptions etc)- its more professional than discussing it in thin air.
c.Keep your Common sense handy! Remember some common stats like population of country/size of the paper/GDP etc
d.Ask questions. One skill of an Analyst is –being Inquisitive
2.Prepare well for puzzle type questions. E.g How many times do the hour hand and the minute hand of the clock coincide during a span of 24 hours?
3.Prepare the Guess estimate questions – Predict the sales of a consumer electronics company in terms of number of units on day-basis in India
4.Be prepared with general questions that interviewer asks (Why do you want to work for us? Why did you move into Data Science?), and also questions that you can ask them (this does not include salary negotiations please).
5.Try making your resume relevant to Analytics with highlights of the projects and internships. Finally know your own Resume contents well!
Ivy is a pioneer in Big Data Analytics Training in India and has trained more than 10,000 students and professionals since its inception in 2007. Ivy conducts training on Business Analytics, Data Visualisation and Advance Analytics and Big Data Hadoop training along with the newly launched Machine Learning with Python .Ivy conducts online and live classroom sessions in Kolkata, New Delhi and Bangalore. Apart from these cities, students can access the trainings on a live online mode.
Stay hooked for Part II of this series on our blog! Coming soon.
Team Ivy
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