Interview experience for a Data Analyst role at Zalando, Berlin
Here is a recap about my Data Analyst interview experience with one of the top Fashion E-Commerce platforms in Europe. Should you want to understand how the experience would pan out, then this is definitely the right read for you.
What is Zalando?
Zalando SE is a German multi-national fashion E-commerce organisation headquartered in Berlin, Germany. As one of the top European online platforms, Zalando caters to 23 countries now.
What do Data Analysts at Zalando do?
Being a big company and having a lot of teams and data to deal with, the requirement for a seasoned Data Analyst for all of these tasks is crucial. A Data Analyst would ideally be the data and insights expert for the team.
If you are working in the Pricing team, you would need to contribute to high impact initiatives which directly affect the way prices are set for over 500,000 articles. On the other hand, if one works with the Customer Segmentation & Predictive Analytics Team, s/he would need to leverage their expertise to provide deeper understanding about Zalando’s customer base.
All in all, a Data Analyst needs to independently perform analytical tasks and be able to transform data into actionable insights to drive decision making processes. There are tons of tools and technologies that Data Analysts use on their day to day activities like SQL, R/Python, Tableau, Power BI, Looker, Microstrategy etc. Knowing all or even some of these tools well will help you navigate through your day to day tasks efficiently.
How was my interview experience for the role?
My interview process was very swift and efficient, while I went through the process for Data Analyst at Market Offprice Team, Zalando Lounge. I received an email from one of the recruiters who felt that my profile was fit for the role and the process. Let’s breakdown the different rounds that I went through over the course of the application process —
Coding Test on Codility
I was asked to appear for the coding round which was 80% SQL and 20% Python on an online coding platform called Codility. If you have been working in an Analyst role with a day to day exposure to SQL, the questions should be fairly straightforward and would determine your data collection skills (from different tables) along with your data-level to aggregation understanding. Along with that, you would need a good understanding of Python to help you with the Python questions.
Hiring Manager interview
Once I saw my result on the screen (which was a 100% score), I received a call the subsequent day from my Recruiter saying that I was ready to face my to-be manager for an introductory call.
In this round, I was asked about my day to day activities in my current role, the stakeholder interactions that I went through in the past as well as about my knowledge with different tools and languages for data based tasks. Along with that, I was asked to solve a quick case study and the question went like ‘There has been a dip in the daily active users on Zalando’s shopping platform. What might be the reasons for the same?’. In this round, I had a chance to understand about my role in-depth as well as the day-to-day tasks and interactions that I would have.
Once the above round was complete, I had a back-to-back 3 hour interview with a 30 minutes break in-between. So, I buckled up for that day!!! 💪
Professional Interview
This interview was an interaction with me and the Lead of Tracking & Onsite Analytics Team. I was tested about my understanding of the role at this point, along with my skills. I was even asked about some questions regarding query and table optimisation techniques when writing SQL scripts as well as my understanding about the level of datasets. It was mostly situation based, with some ‘How would you do’, ‘What would you do’ etc. in certain situations.
Human Resources Interview
In this round, my recruiter joined the call to ask me about how was everything so far. More like a casual conversation, he wanted to know about my interest for the role and Zalando, what were my future aspirations and goals. This was a 30-minute conversation wherein, the recruiter wanted to know a bit more about me.
Stakeholder Management Interview
Now, I had a round setup with the Senior Commercial Planning & Strategy Manager and this was a stakeholder management round. The round meant that I had to showcase my management skills when it comes to interacting and working with members from the other teams. Having worked as a Product Analyst for a substantial amount of time, I felt that I could handle this round because a Product Analyst needs to interact with many stakeholders on a day to day basis.
In this round, I was asked about task prioritisation questions and the interviewer wanted to know about how I go around interacting with different stakeholders on a daily basis. Moreover, I was asked different case studies to solve in this round. During these case studies, we would have to deep-dive into each of the factors that we list down while the interviewer would try to counter question on your points/views.
Team Fit Interview
If you make it till here, congratulations! You have done most of the hard work and this would be a casual conversation with one of your to-be team members. They would want to know about your personality and working style. In my case, I was asked if I liked working in teams or alone and how do I go about my tasks on a daily basis. To summarise, it’s a really casual conversation to know each other better.
How did I prepare for Data Analyst interviews?
For this section, I want to build a detailed blog to help you out. In the meantime, feel free to give my portfolio 📄 a visit.
If you liked everything till here and want another blog discussing about how to prepare for Data Analyst roles in Europe - give this read a like ▶ 👏 and I shall get to work ASAP !
Cheers! 🍻
