Black Swan Data Interview Questions
& Process

It was a positive and straightforward 3-part interview process. First, a recruiter call, then a hiring manager interview, and finally a case study. After that, I met with the CEO for a culture fit assessment. The team was warm and welcoming, and the recruiter was very communicative throughout. The process was relatively quick overall!

Started with a recruiter phone call, then talked to an engineer and the data science lead. The data science lead asked me stuff about NLP that was totally irrelevant and unfair because I never said I had experience in it and it had nothing to do with the job. It felt like she was just trying to feel superior and then she just left the call during the 'technical' part. The technical part was with a data engineer who was super awkward and kept leaving the camera without explaining or apologizing, which was a big turn-off. He started asking about using UDFs in spark. I told him I avoid them because they're slow and I use other methods, but he took that as me not knowing anything. Both interviewers seemed arrogant and insecure, and the interview felt like it was just to boost their egos by asking about stuff they know really well. It was an unpleasant waste of time, felt like I was bullied by the cool kids.

So, a recruiter I found was handling the first part, and that went super smooth and professional. But man, the next interview was rough, like one of the worst I've had. The manager was totally condescending, and I felt like he was just insecure. He kept grilling me with more questions after every answer, trying to see if I'd crack under pressure instead of actually checking my skills. It felt more like an interrogation to see if I was a 'fit.' Then, he hit me with this curveball, asking for exact quotes from a sales book I read like 5 years ago when we were talking about tactics I used that worked. After all that, he just decides I can't lead/mentor his one salesperson, even though I'm currently leading 15 people. He said I'd be good at the sales part though (it's an individual role). He never asked about my current team, leadership style, or success metrics, but made that call anyway. Such a great product and company, but held back by a manager with a terrible interview style.

I had a face-to-face interview with a software engineer who seemed inexperienced in interviewing. He asked me some Java questions during a 30-minute chat, which was considered a success. This interview felt like it was just for formality. Afterward, I was given a take-home task. The task instructions were in a 2-page Word document that wasn't very well-prepared. I noticed variable names like 'date_time' in the document, which I used as is. I built a project that met all the requirements and had no bugs. However, they expected it to be more like a real-world project. One reason they cited was my use of 'date_time' instead of camel case 'dateTime.' It was my mistake for accepting the task initially, but I find it frustrating when a carelessly prepared document is given, and then a world-class output is expected.