Citizens Data Scientist Interview Questions
& Process

You start by sending in your resume and cover letter through the company's online portal or a job site. Then there's an online test with coding problems (Python/SQL), database questions, and multiple-choice questions on stats, business analytics, or logic. Next, a behavioral interview where they'll ask about teamwork, communication, and past projects using the STAR method. After that, a technical interview that might involve live coding or case-study questions. You could be asked to work on SQL queries, analyze data from a business dashboard, or talk more about a past project. The last interview is with a hiring manager or future teammates, focusing on fitting into the team culture, your career plans, and what you expect from the role. If they like you, you'll get an offer; otherwise, they might give you feedback to help you improve.

This is for a data scientist position in a fraud/risk team. The recruiter was very professional and helpful throughout the entire process. The interview process with the HM created a negative, unprofessional experience. The company/HR department might want to have some quality control and/or training for their interviewers. The interviewers were late for the meetings from 5-10 minutes every time. I passed the Python coding round, or at least the interviewer told me so in the interview, he told me no need to finish the rest 2 or 3 questions so we started to chat about the team and projects. Later, they told me I failed at the Python round after another round of case interview. The use case round was supposed to last 1 hour, the HM first scheduled a 1-hour session and then shorten it to a 30-min one, which is OK. However, he was 5-10 mins late again for the meeting and told me he couldn't find the case in his computer... Many times I didn't quite get what he was asking/looking for. Very disorganized and underprepared case interview experience compared to my previous experiences with other companies. The feedback is lack of depth in Python and the use case result is subpar. If so, why did you move me to the use case round after the Python one and had told me coding round went well? And isn't it essential that an interviewer has a case available in a case study interview?

So, there were 5 rounds in total. It kicked off with a recruiter chat, then a hiring manager discussion. After that, I had talks with the tech and product teams. They dove into my ML skills, SQL knowledge, and some problem-solving questions specific to data science. For the product part, they presented scenarios and asked how I'd approach them or make things better.