Data Analytics Interviews: What to Expect and How to Prepare

If you’re searching for a data analytics job, what can you expect when it comes to interviews? What can you do to prepare?

The first thing to know is that every company has a slightly different — or very different — process. But there are some commonalities you can expect.

Rounds of Data Analytics Interviews

At the very least, expect three rounds of interviews:

1. Recruiter screening
2. Hiring manager interview
3. Panel interview or “on-site” or “virtual on-site” consisting of back-to-back meetings with some of all of the following: a peer (another data analyst or data scientist), someone in leadership (perhaps the hiring manager’s boss), and a stakeholder (such as a product manager or marketing manager or someone from the team you’ll support).

However, some companies also add in things like:

• Another recruiter screening. This is common if the first recruiter is external from a staffing or recruitment agency, or if it’s a big company that has technical recruiters who support specific teams.
• A technical assessment, usually live coding via a site like Hacker Rank (where they can see what you type).
• A technical take-home project, where they give you some data and expectations for what to deliver, and you return a project or give a presentation.

The order can vary — sometimes the technical assessment comes before meeting the hiring manager, sometimes after, or sometimes the hiring manager or a peer does the technical assessment.

Also, remember that you are allowed to ask questions at any point!

• If you have an interview coming up and aren’t sure what it’ll include or how to prepare — ask your recruiter! The recruiter wants you to succeed because the sooner they can fill this open role, the sooner they can check it off their To Do list and move on.
• If you are asked a question during the interview and don’t understand exactly what they’re looking for, ask for clarification. As a data analyst, you should be doing this all the time on the job, and not operating with assumptions. So it’s not a bad thing to ask clarifying questions in job interviews.
• During the technical assessments, they want to see how you communicate and also how you approach solving problems, so ask questions if you need clarification and also talk through your approach during live coding and/or summarize your methodology for takehome assessments.
• During the business case questions, they don’t just want to know how you’d solve the problem — they want to make sure you’re identifying the problem correctly. So ask any clarifying questions up front, validate any assumptions you’re making, and try to understand the root cause as much as possible before talking about how you’d solve the problem.

What to expect during a Recruiter screening

The recruiter screening is almost always the first step. Expect a phone call (sometimes a Zoom/video meeting) lasting 15–30 minutes.

This round is going to be pretty high level. Expect any or all of the following:

• A high-level overview of the company, the team, and the role.
• Asking if you’re familiar with the company and why you’re interested in the role and/or company.
• Asking for a high-level summary of your background.
• Asking for a summary of a project (or two) that you’ve done that delivered business value. (More on this below.)
• Asking you to assess yourself or explain your familiarity or experience with any of the technical skills listed on the job description (SQL, Tableau, Python, etc).
• Sometimes technical questions come up. Often the recruiter is reading off a script and looking for something specific in your answer.
• Asking “housekeeping” questions, like do you require sponsorship, what are your salary expectations (more on this below), can you commute to the office (if hybrid or in-person), how much notice do you need to give at your current role, etc.
• Giving you an opportunity to ask questions — take advantage of this! You’re interviewing them as much as they are interviewing you and asking questions will make you look more engaged or interested. (More on this below.)

What to expect during a Hiring Manager interview

The hiring manager interview can have more variation. I would expect most of the same questions above from the recruiter round, with some differences.

• More questions about your background and experience, and probably deeper or more specific questions.
• Lots of questions about projects you’ve worked on, what steps you took, why you made certain decisions, and how you delivered business value.
• Maybe some technical questions, more from a problem-solving perspective than as if it were a test.
• Business sense or case study questions.
• Time for you to ask your own questions.

What to expect during a Leadership interview

Often during the panel round of interviewing, you’ll meet with the hiring manager’s boss or someone else in a leadership role — Director or Vice President. Sometimes this person will have a technical background, other times more of a business background. The questions they ask will likely depend on their background. But I would expect more high-level “big picture” questions about how you make decisions and how you’ve delivered value to a company. Maybe similar to what the hiring manager would ask.

What to expect during a Peer or Stakeholder interview

You also might meet with a possible peer — a data analyst or data scientist already on the team. Or a stakeholder — someone from the team you’ll support. The questions might be similar to what the hiring manager would ask, although the stakeholder will likely ask more business or case study questions than technical ones.

What to expect during a data analytics technical assessment

There are two ways companies do technical assessments — live coding challenges or take-home projects.

For live coding, expect to receive a link to a site like Hacker Rank. This link will allow the interviewer and you to see what the other types. Often they will include a few rows or explanations of a sample data table, and ask you to complete a series of hypothetical problems or questions, which you’ll solve via SQL or depending on the role, via Python or probability.

For a take-home project, you will be provided with a dataset and instructions for the problem you need to solve or questions you need to answer. You will get a set number of days before you need to turn in your results. They will usually recommend how many hours you should spend on the project.

Some companies, instead of giving you a few days to complete, will schedule this like an interview. It will start with them explaining the data and the problem, you’ll then have a set amount of time (maybe 1–2 hours) to work on it, and then at the end of the time, you’ll need to present your work.

How to prepare for data analytics interviews

Now that you know what to expect in data analytics interviews, how do you prepare? Below are the steps that I typically follow.

Research the company. I aim to spend maybe 15 minutes reviewing the company’s website, their Wikipedia page, LinkedIn page, and maybe search Google News for recent articles. You want to make sure you understand what the company does, how the role you’re interviewing for fits in, and have an answer for the question “why do you want to work here?”

Prepare a list of my accomplishments. Many of the interview rounds will include questions about my experience, so I always have this document handy to jog my memory. In it, I have a summary of all of my recent major projects, including the situation or business problem, the tasks I contributed, and the results or outcome or business value that was delivered. I’m not creating a script for myself, but rather a menu of my own examples that I can refer to depending on the question asked.

Think about my answers to common interview questions. You can find lists via Google Search of “common interview questions.” But once you’ve gone through enough interviews, you have a general idea of them. I find it helpful to journal out my own answers to these questions, using all of the advice found online, but putting things in my own words, with my own examples. Again, this isn’t a script, but just a way to prepare my answers and have examples top of mind.

One common question or prompt is “Tell me about yourself.” I found this video helpful for crafting my answer.

Research the people you’re meeting with. This is simply looking at their LinkedIn profile. Generally, I want to get a sense if the person I’m talking to is more technical or has a different background, so I know how detailed to go in my answers. It’s also helpful to check out the LinkedIn profile of anyone else in the same role at the company to see what kind of candidate they’ve typically hired.

Research what questions and topics the company you’re interviewing with typically asks. You can find study guides by company on Interview Query. Additionally, check sites like Glassdoor and Blind to see if there is any specific information about what is asked during interviews.

Practice for coding challenges. Even if you use SQL or Python every day on the job, it’s often not the type of code you’ll write in these job interview challenges. Practice on sites like Interview Query or Dataford. Also check out my framework to follow during technical assessments.

Think about business case questions. These will vary by industry or what team you’ll be supporting — product, marketing, finance, sales, etc — they will have different business case questions. For product roles, I put together this summary of frameworks for answering questions. For any role, think about what the company does, and how this role will support the company’s goals, and use that to guide your answers.

Prepare a list of your own questions. Always use the time they give you to ask questions. During every round. It shows that you’re engaged and genuinely interested in the role and looking for a good fit. There are tons of questions you can ask, I have a list of ideas. But I think about what I need to know in order to evaluate if this role will be good for me. And this will be different for everyone.

But some common questions that are good to ask:

• To the recruiter, what is the interview process like? How has the company changed in the past year (or two or three)? What’s the title of the hiring manager?
• To the hiring manager, what do you hope this person will accomplish in the first year? Are there any skill gaps you are hiring to cover? What’s a recent decision the business made based on an analysis done by your team?
• To a peer, what is a recent major project you worked on? How do you work with the teams that you support? What questions or problems do they typically have? How easy is it to get the data that you need?

Do a mock interview. If you have someone in your network who is also looking for a job, practice interviewing each other. Or if you have a mentor or career coach, ask them if they can do a mock interview. Otherwise, you can also practice in the mirror, or even better, by recording yourself. Or, you can seek out coaching services.

What about salary questions?

It is very common in the first interview for the recruiter to bring up the topic of salary. Typically this is by asking you for your salary expectations.

You should always have a number in mind for your salary expectations. If you aren’t sure what that number is at the moment, do your research. Check out sites like Glassdoor, Blind, Levels.fyi, the H1B Database for reporting salaries by company and job title. Additionally, there are annual salary guides with more salary information. Finally, you can calculate your goal salary or compare potential new salaries in my goal salary calculator.

A few things to note when talking about salary during interviews:

Never share your current salary. It’s a pretty outdated practice for recruiters to ask you for your actual salary, and in some states, it’s actually illegal for them to ask for your current salary. But if they do ask, don’t share it. You can either respond with “well my expectations for my next role are …” or “I’m not comfortable sharing, but can you tell me the salary range budgeted for the role?”

If they ask for your salary expectations. Personally, I respond by saying “I do have a number in mind, but can you share the salary range budgeted for the role?” In some states, they legally have to tell you the range if you ask for it. In states where that’s not law, you still don’t have to share any numbers. If they won’t share their range, you can share “well, the ranges I’m hearing from similar companies for similar roles is $x-y, so I would expect something in that range.” And it can be a big range.

You can change your salary expectations. If you do end up giving a number or range, you aren’t locked in. Your expectations can change for a number of reasons:

• Based on what you learned throughout the interviews, the job is more senior or requires a more advanced skillset than you originally thought.
• You’ve since interviewed with other companies and their salary ranges are all higher.
• You received an offer from another company that is higher than their range.
• Something changed at your current job (a raise, a new project, etc) and you’re less interested in leaving, so it will take a higher salary to get you to quit.

Following up after interviews

Once the interview is over, what’s next?

One thing you can do to manage your own expectations is ask them about the interview process. In the recruiter screening, about the structure and timing of their interview rounds. And at the end of each round, as “what are the next steps?” and/or “when do you plan to make a decision?”

Should you send a thank you note? The advice I’ve seen is pretty split on thank you notes. Some folks feel that you should always send one to everyone you met with. Others feel that it is the company who should be thankful. (After all, they have an open role that they need to be filled — in this case, the candidates are doing them a favor.) There are trends by industry, and in tech, they seem much less common than in more traditional industries. It shouldn’t hurt your chances if you send a note, so if you feel compelled to do so, send one.

When should you follow up? How long after an interview should you wait before following up, assuming you haven’t received a response? Well, if you know their timing for the next steps, then I would wait until at least that period has passed, and maybe double it. For example, if they said “by the end of next week,” I’d wait until the end of the week after that, and then follow up. If you don’t know the timing, then I would wait at least 2 weeks.

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