Coolblue Data Scientist Interview Questions
& Process

Nice meeting with two senior teammates. Then, given a week to complete a sales forecasting case study for 2 fictional products. Finally, a review with the same teammates including follow-up questions. The meetings were pleasant, but for an entry-level role, the qualification requirements felt quite high (in-depth data science knowledge and experience with building and maintaining production solutions).

First, I sent in my CV. Then, I had a call with HR where they asked about my past experiences and specifically why I wanted to join CoolBlue. After that, I interviewed with an experienced Data Scientist who wanted to talk about my past experiences and focus on a relevant project I had done. I then completed a take-home assignment that involved time series forecasting. Finally, I had 3 calls with people from different teams, and one of them was a Data Scientist where we had to discuss the take-home assignment.

The whole process was pretty chill and straightforward. First, there was a 30-minute phone chat to see if I was a good fit motivation-wise (like, why Coolblue?), talk about salary (they mentioned a range of 3100-3600, on the lower side), and some really basic data science stuff. Then, a 1-hour virtual interview where I had to discuss one of my data science projects for about 20-30 minutes, followed by some behavioral questions, mainly about teamwork. After that, I had a 7-day take-home assignment involving forecasting, which they estimated would take a day but ended up taking me at least four. It was a bit vague, with a big focus on efficiency but no clear way to measure it. They wanted a full explanation of everything. The final stage was a 30-minute virtual interview about the assignment, and then two more 45-minute virtual interviews with data scientists, likely covering more technical and behavioral aspects.