Knewton Interview Questions
& Process

Had a short phone chat, then an hour-long remote technical interview, followed by a half-day of interviews at their office, which were mostly technical. It felt surprisingly simple. I'd be suspicious they might be using you for interview practice. The best guess is that (1) they had a practice interviewer for an hour, and (2) the reason they gave for not offering me the job was that I lacked a specific technical skill they hadn't mentioned before. Other reasons are possible, but I'd double-check if any specific technical skills are needed. On the plus side, everyone I met seemed smart and friendly, and would likely be enjoyable to work with. The experience was fun in a way, but also felt like a waste of time.

I got referred to the Data Scientist role at Knewton by a former colleague. I left my previous Ed Tech job to get into Data Science and have 2 years of experience. I talked to the Knewton recruiter about the Data Science Team and their Data Scientist opening. Based on my background teaching Stats during my PhD as a Computational Biologist, I thought it was a good fit. I applied for the Data Scientist role. The process began with a Knewton Machine Learning challenge where you use student responses to questions to keep good ones in a test bank. It took about 10 hours plus some reading on Item Response Theory, and it was really fun and challenging. After I finished, the recruiter said the Data Team loved my submission and she'd set up a phone screen with a team member, emphasizing they wanted to move fast. The phone screen was with the Head of Data Warehouse and mostly involved questions about the company and role. While we talked, I started to suspect it was more of a Data Analyst role than Data Scientist. I asked about it but didn't get a clear answer. The technical part involved him asking me simple SQL queries verbally, very quickly, without any CoderPad, which was different from the scheduling email. After the interview, I emailed the recruiter to confirm if it was for the Data Scientist or Data Analyst role listed on their website. She called instead of emailing. On the call, she said: - "I'm sorry you were confused about the role you were applying for." (Despite all emails mentioning Data Scientist or Data Team, never Data Analyst). - "The Data Scientist role is for people with years of experience in Machine Learning." (Which made me wonder why they gave an ML challenge to someone not doing ML, and it felt insulting given the early stage). - When I questioned why I'd interview for a lesser role than my current one, she responded: "The Data Analyst role isn't a lower position than Data Scientist." I decided to withdraw from the process during that call. My advice if you're interviewing with them: be wary of being misled. Even if told it's a Data Scientist position, remember my experience – they might be inexperienced or intentionally bait-and-switching to hire a Data Scientist for an Analyst role. It felt unprofessional and dishonest, so I wouldn't recommend wasting your time.

So, after a quick online application, I had a call with the recruiter, then a take-home coding assignment. Next up was a phone interview with the department head, followed by a final round of in-person interviews. The whole thing was really well organized and everyone was super friendly and helpful. I got a great vibe for the team and company culture. A cool part of the in-person interview was the coding challenge - they gave me a laptop with a familiar setup and internet, and let me work on it alone for a bit before they came back to discuss. It felt more real than whiteboard coding. Just a heads-up for the in-person part: they scheduled about 30 mins as a 'break' which turned out to be prep time for the panel interview, so I felt a bit drained. It's a half-day round though, so it's manageable if you know. Also, I thought the final team interview would be more of a chat, but it was more like I presented and they asked questions. Totally fine, but I would have paced myself differently if I'd known.

It took a month to hear back after submitting my resume. I had to reach out multiple times through LinkedIn, email, and phone before they scheduled an interview. I had 2 phone interviews and 4 in-person interviews. I mentioned that it seemed like a lot, but they wanted another interview. I met about 10% of the staff, and they still wanted me to interview with the CEO for final approval. After all of that, and telling them I thought the process was too much, they said they weren't moving forward with me, even though they'd said I was a great fit all along. If this is how the company is run, I'm glad I didn't get the job.