Global Data Science

Interview
Preparation
Pack
Welcome!

We’ve gathered all of the information you need within this pack
to get you set up for success during your interviews with us
#insideindeed.

Before you check out your pack, take a peek at the lives of our
employees around the globe by clicking the video link on the left!
About us
The team — Indeed's Data Science team embeds on product and
engineering teams to improve data quality, to promote the scientific method
in decision-making, and to help the team build better user-facing products
with Indeed's data. They utilize advanced analysis, statistical and machine
learning techniques in leveraging our data to help people get jobs.

Indeed’s Data Scientists — A Data Scientist at Indeed deploys machine

learning models in production to drive impact. With their product and
engineering counterparts, they ensure to implement realistic, maintainable,
and cutting edge models. Their super power align with methods for dealing
with very large data sets, machine learning, software engineering and best
practices, deep knowledge of a particular domain, writing well about design
trade offs and so on.

Interests and passion of Data Scientists at Indeed tend to lean heavy

towards machine learning models, software engineering, model evaluation,
and other applied machine learning techniques.

Learn more about Data Science @ Indeed!

What can you expect?
Highlighting your talents
Throughout each interview, you will have the opportunity to showcase both your applied and theoretical knowledge. In order to do this,
interviewers will guide you through interviews, seeking to make things as clear as possible and answer any questions you may have. In addition,
these interviews are open ended and will provide an opportunity for you to show your uniqueness in solving Data Science problems, showcase
your curiosity, and your communication skills.

We get excited about candidates who can showcase their expertise and passion in these core strengths:

● Coding – How well you can implement solutions and balance tradeoffs
● Machine Learning – How well you understand ML concepts and can apply them
● Statistics – How well you can apply math and statistics to our products and experiments
● Product Sense – How you think about product improvements and direction
● Communication & Collaboration – How well you work with others

For Data Science there’s a particular emphasis on Machine Learning and Coding, but we seek to understand your strengths in all areas.

Interviewing & the team you’d join

Our Data Science interview is the same regardless of team. We are looking for your strength in the fundamentals along with your style and
approach to Data Science. Our interviewers will be evaluating the strengths and curiosity you will showcase in the interview.

After the interview, our Data Science interviewers are prepared to make recommendations on what type of Indeed Product team you will make
the most impact on, align with your professional goals, and environment that will make you most successful here at Indeed.
 A few of them to highlight
Your soft skills
Communication and talking through your thought
process of how you are solving the problem is key.
There are 8 traits we look out for during the interviews:
This allows for interviewers to provide guidance and
hints if you are unsure how to solve the problem or
● Problem Solving headed down the wrong path with your answer. We
● Critical Thinking & Analysis have a bias for simplicity, the most obvious and
direct approach to a solution is the preferred method.
● Expressing Solutions in Math, Algorithms and Code
● Communication
Collaboration will be how well you receive this
● Logical Reasoning
information and use it to achieve an optimal solution.
● Collaboration Be prepared to ask clarifying questions and leverage
● Initiative your interviewers.
● Tenacity
Tenacity for when you are in over your head but have
the drive to continue working the problem to reach a
solution.
Interview process | Overview
Please note
Indeed’s Data Scientist Interview Process has 4 stages:
● Interview stages may vary slightly depending
1. Phone screening — Congratulations! 🎉 on the Data Scientist role you are interviewing
You already passed this phase. for. Your recruiter will walk you through any
additional stages and their order so you’re
confident with our interview requirements
2. Take Home Exercise throughout the process.

3. Technical Video Screen ● Currently, all interviews are done virtually.

Should your interview take place at Indeed
4. Team Interviews Offices, your Recruitment Coordinator will
share more details with you.

Read more about each stage on next pages.

Take Home Exercise Technical Video Screen

Data Science Homework In this interview, we’ll jump into the three core technical
We created a take home assignment that mimics the skills of Indeed data scientists. You’ll be provided with real
messy large data problems our team solves on a daily data, coding problems, and statistics/probability questions.
basis. You’ll have specific tasks to complete.

We’d like to see how you solve tough open-ended Expect to get your hands dirty in writing real code
problems in a rigorous manner, and make tradeoffs (language of choice to be confirmed with your recruiter,
between complexity and generalization in your data preferably Python or R), and providing clear mathematical
science solutions. solutions. You will be writing code in a collaborative editing
environment which allows one or two of our team members
This is a great opportunity to display your skills, without to evaluate your technical skills.
time restrictions and in the comfort of your own home.
We are also interested in your business knowledge. Make
sure you show how your solutions can impact a real
business problem.
Team Interviews
These interviews can be conducted over the course of a couple of days, if needed. Each interview will last approximately 60 minutes and many will give you a
chance to ask questions about Indeed or the role. These interviews will cover a number of technical, leadership and cultural assessment.

Areas we will cover:

● Math/Stats: You will cover mathematics, probability and statistical topics in this interview. These questions will probe both applied and theoretical
statistic knowledge. We want to see how you abstract real problems into a mathematical framework, to then solve precisely. Expect to work through
problems with your interviewer, writing appropriate notation along the way.

● Machine Learning: The machine learning interview will cover both theoretical knowledge and applied skills through a hypothetical application of
machine learning in a product. We will outline a specific problem for you to propose a solution for, and the interview will include many topics
including; problem definition, model selection, deployment considerations, and model evaluation.

● Data Science Exercise: In this section, you will build a data driven solution to an NLP problem. We encourage you to think about corner cases, edge
cases, boundary cases, time constraints, time complexity etc. This activity will be a 90 minute coding exercise completed using Amazon Workspace.
You will need to prepare the tool prior to the interview. To download the app, it will take approximately 15 mins, so please ensure you see these
instructions before the interview.

● Software Problem Solving: In this interview you will be tasked to solve one whiteboard coding problem in Python or another language of your
choice. The code will not need to compile but we are looking for a reasonable approach translated into code, with considerations around runtime
complexity and correctness.

● Resumé Review: For experienced candidates this interview focuses on your background, the places you’ve worked, the teams you’ve led, and the
impact you’ve had. In addition to speaking about your background, we may explore your experience leading particular Data Science projects.

Close — This is your opportunity to ask any final questions you may have about the role and Indeed, to reflect on the interview process, and
answer a few more questions. Be prepared to talk about your career goals and as pirations.
 Tools you will need

For the Data Science Exercise, we will use Amazon WorkSpaces as a platform. Please see the following
instructions and prepare the tool before the interview.

1 2 3
Visit the site from here; Select the client that matches the computer After downloading the app, please open and the
https://clients.amazonworkspaces.com/ that you own interviewer will provide further instructions at the
interview (registration code, user ID and password)

*Note: Since we will use Linux WorkSpace, we won’t use web access. A web browser cannot be used to connect to Amazon Linux WorkSpaces.
Helpful tips

Need a guide? Try these links:

Websites Take a look inside Data Science @ Indeed:

● HackerRank ● Growing with Indeed: From New Grad to
● Understanding the HackerRank interview interface Experienced Data Scientist (blog)
● Kaggle ● How does Data Science influence the growth of
● Leetcode Indeed? (video clip)
● IndeedEng Presents: The Art and Science of Product Metrics (video)
● What exciting initiatives is your Data Science
● Indeed Data Science blog
team working on at Indeed? (video clip)
● Leaning on data to help people get jobs (blog)
Books
● An Introduction to Statistical Learning by James et al. ● Indeed’s Senior Data Science Manager talks
(machine learning) about Data Science at Indeed as well as our
● All of Statistics by Wasserman (statistics) 2022 expansion (podcast)
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to see more about life #insideindeed.

In case you have any feedback about your

candidate experience, please contact
[email protected].

Good luck, and see you at the interview!

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