Provenir Interview Questions
& Process

So there were like 4 interviews and 1 technical test. First up was the talent acquisition person, just asking standard stuff like my experience and salary expectations. Then I talked to the director who asked me about my experience in financial services. After that, I got a technical test with modeling and predictive models, which wasn't too hard. The next interview was with a senior data scientist where we went over the modeling I did in the technical test, step by step. The final interview was with 3 people: a senior data scientist, the head of product, and someone from the C-suite. They wanted me to give a presentation about my past work, and then they'd ask questions about it. What really irked me was the feedback after passing all those interviews. They said I didn't get the job because someone else was a better fit for their needs. I tried asking what I was missing, what I could improve, and what they liked, but they were super vague, just saying 'minor gaps.' So annoying. Clearly, the feedback was just a formality, no real explanation. I guess if I were a client, I'd really reconsider using their service with this kind of attitude. Candidates spend days on technical tests and explaining their business ideas. Hope they do well with this approach.

After three interviews where I demonstrated my qualifications and extensive experience in all the required technologies, as well as good soft skills, motivation, proactivity, and a desire to grow, they came back saying the position was matched with another candidate. They didn't give a specific reason or mention what areas were a better match with the other candidate. They also took weeks to respond. I suspect anyone looking for a stable position and to work with a mature team wouldn't want to work here.

The process kicked off with a recruiter call and then a 45-minute Skype interview that focused more on my resume and experience with large datasets (SQL) rather than technical skills. This role also needs good presentation and simple data visualization skills for client presentations. Following that, I had an onsite interview in Boston. It started with a case study exercise where I had 15 minutes to prepare and then discuss my solution with two interviewers. One of them had conducted my earlier phone interview. We started by discussing our backgrounds, then moved on to the case study. The case involved a large retailer client with a significant online presence, whose VP of Marketing wanted suggestions on cutting the marketing budget by 10% without impacting sales. The VP's department controls spending across all channels, including advertising, social media, and online departments. After the case discussion, which lasted about 45-50 minutes with some hints from the interviewers, I had a brief 10-15 minute chat with the second interviewer about customer targeting using mobile data. I received the results via email less than a week later. The overall experience was positive, and they clearly valued relevant resume factors for the role. Both interviewers were in senior management.

I had 2 phone interviews, each about 40 minutes. Then I went for 2 onsite interviews, one was 4 hours and the other 3 hours. After that, I had another phone call where I had to explain my code, which took 45 minutes. They then asked me to design different apps and solve various problems. I was also given a task to code a complete app in 2 hours, covering architecture, UI/UX, and authentication with Angular. In the final phone interview, I had to do a screen-shared conference call to explain my code in detail, and they recorded it. After all this, I received no updates or feedback. It felt like a way for some companies to get free training material for their current developers by interviewing senior candidates, recording their explanations, and using it as a reference. I enjoyed the technical parts of the interview with the engineers, but the non-technical/manager interviews had some outdated or unclear questions.