I’m looking for advice from practicing data scientists/ml engineers (I ask both becasue I enjoy both roles and these roles are not mutually exclusive most places) on how you’ve succeeded in getting interviews and passing them. I’m especially interested in the ones who have relocated to a new city for said work and how you make yourself valuable enough to be more desirable than the local crop. Going with the typical resume pool way, im having very little luck getting first round HR calls. I’ve applied for jobs all over the spectrum from very new startup to FANG. I’d love to even know how you prepared and what you have seen in interviews. I do not have much technical interview experience so I mostly dont know what to expect. Like... do I really have to waste my time on leetcode for a job ill almost never use those exact skills for? I’m especially open to phone chat to actually conversate, as well. DMs very welcome. Thanks 4YOE, TC:~100k
The problem with these interviews is monumental differences between places in what they ask due to lack of standardization of the role definitions. Anything from linear algebra theory to LC to deep domain knowledge can be probed.
For getting an interview, apply thru referral. If you don’t know anybody, you can get referred on here or buy referrals on other websites. as you mentioned, ds is very broad. For my ds interview loop at a FAANG, I was asked lc mediums, sql, ml concepts (e.g. write out backprop), a lot of stats, framework questions (e.g describe tensorflow concept). At my current startup ds job the interview is quite chill and only needs stats/ml knowledge, and prior software projects. The fb interview loop needs sql, not so much lc or deep ml knowledge. So I guess it all depends.