Recruiter reached out and proposed a role that looked fairly interesting. First step was to talk to the hiring manager, I gave my availability the first day but eventually took 4 weeks for that to be scheduled. The talk with Hiring manager was just a chat, its more like he sells you the role rather than you need to sell him yourself. Then its the first round technical phone interview. Which also took two weeks to schedule, extremely slow I don't know if its because of Covid and everyone moved out of california.
Technical phone interview was with another DS manager, its the same system you read here: data and then product sense. They don't really care about your background or fit, just run through the lines. They are actually fairly basic data questions, just that you don't have much time to think and you can't be wrong at any point. It does feel quite intense if your interviewer is trying to question you every 5 seconds, and confirm you are not wrong. I used Python but the interviewer didn't know any python, I had to explain what the syntax means when I try to think at the same time, and keep in mind of the time. They will push you to stop when its time even if they interrupted you most of the time. So you have to find a balance between you speaking out your mind to him and actually coding.
The product sense question was standard too, I prepared some structure to answer those questions, but my interviewer didn't let me go through them, he kept jumping in with side questions while I was trying to lay out the steps and getting to the answer. I don't think I handled that too well, as I was constantly interrupted with questions that I was going to answer or to clarify with him. Again you can't be wrong at any stage. I think what killed my chances was that either I misunderstood his question or he asked the question wrong, he said something happened and metrics spiked and what would you do. Its a very typical question and I prepared for it. But half way answering he started to question part of it, and then I started to realize what he said was not the same as what he asked. I tried pointing out the misalignment but it was already too late. When you try to clear things up over a video call with lag it just turns into an argument. Received a no the next morning.
