First Job Interview Experience
All I needed was to keep it cool despite the pressure, with full concentration and focus. Despite any level of aplomb, that was a real freaking moment I had to face.
The first day was job assessment, a sheet of A4 paper with prints front and back was distributed, just a few questions at the back and some part that's written “official use only” like a bank teller. The questions type were majorly behavioral. Damn! They ought to be answered in a face-to-face interview with someone over the table. Anyway, I have to do this. Meanwhile, I got an invitation to the assessment 22 hours prior; I agreed to the time over a phone call and subsequently received an invitation email. The first question on the pretty paper was “Tell me about yourself”. I didn’t rush it despite having refreshed my memory on the exact same question while on transit to the venue, from an interview e-book “How to Answer Interview Questions” by my favourite coach so far, Peggy McKee. I read through the piece of paper front and back. By this time, I noticed that every other candidate had started writing and were wangling their pen fast. It was a room with the description “recruitment room” on the door. Melinda Gates’ Portrait with her quote “Women speaking up for themselves and for those around them is the strongest force we have to change the world” hanging at the center-front of the room. There was no camera in the room though. Yes, I always look out for that and I don’t know why. We were exactly eight candidates for the assessment when we started. Later, one latecomer joined making us three gentlemen and six ladies. Everyone seems busy, I needed to start putting down something on paper because I could not remember how much time that was given for that particular paper. Those were simple but technical questions, In fact, I gave real thought to each question before starting; after all, it’s a paper and pen work, unlike a computer that one can clear and edit. I programmed my answers in my head a little bit to avoid wasting space. Alas, I could not finish before time out. Heck! That is a first blow on my lower jaw in the very first round. This seems real shitty and I had to maintain my focus like nothing happened. There are more question papers on other topics coming. Before that, let me try to paraphrase some of the questions that I can recall, not in a sequential order though.
1. Tell me about yourself.
2. Why do you think you are the best fit for this position?
3. Describe a challenge you faced and how you handled it.
4. Tell me about a mistake you made and how you handle it.
5. Describe a time when you have gone overboard to get a work done.
6. Where do you see yourself in the next 5 years?
7. If you have the opportunity to get a super skill what skill will that be and why?
8. If you have a company, what will be the core value of your company?
9. How did you know about this opportunity?
10. If you have to be at work on a Saturday, will you do that?
11. Salary (amount in figures)
12. It could be 12 questions; I will update it if I remember.
The first plain sheet was distributed for us to put down our details, as the paper will serve as the answer sheet for the second section of the test which has 30 questions. These questions assess one’s verbal and quantitative reasoning as well as the ability to identify patterns in shapes. The first and second questions were the only English questions designed to identify the odd word out and to find related words respectively. The rest were sequence and pattern identification questions. It was really tiring, looking at similar shapes and patterns all over in each question trying to spot a difference or similarity. Notwithstanding, I kept going, it later got really interesting as I only look at those figures and shapes without overthinking. Yes, formulas are not needed, just pay attention and observe. At a point, I was tempted to multiply big numbers when I saw sequence like 4 54 654 ___ at a glance, it looked like some sort of geometric progression. I paused, especially when I could not get a common difference in the progression, looked at the options then back to the sequence. Even without seeing the options, I am sure you have already identified the pattern. Just look at it to understand what’s going on there. For some questions, it was easy and quite fast to understand and identify what was going on actually. I skipped the abstruse ones and went back to them later. Is it not interesting that I finished answering this part before timeout? My answer choices should better be right.
Another paper went round for the third section. This time, it was 10 data analysis/statistics related objective questions, to be answered directly in the paper like the first test and in 10 minutes. Some of the questions include: definition of dashboard, database, identification of software not used for data analysis. The last but not the least was the Excel test, still 10 objective questions for 10 minutes, not far-fetched questions for me as I have been using Excel for long. But I still remember the simple question that I failed. Which of these will not appear when you click SAVE AS? Options are: Excel worksheet, Template, MS Word, PDF. It sounds funny that I ended up choosing a template. I am shy right now! Why I thought “MS Word” could be an option is what I cannot explain. Maybe I was right in the majority of the other questions like: correction of a VLOOKUP function, correction of simple multiplication and division formulas in Excel. At the end of this fourth and last paper, I had the chance to interact with the young man beside me, got to know something about him, and ended with the wrong question: what next as we are done with the test? He had no answer as I didn’t have any. Meanwhile, it seems the officials were recording the results already. One came and announced that they will be with us soon. Eighteen minutes later, the HR came in, met her colleagues, on her way out she mentioned my name and I responded, she said “follow me please”; I took my jotter, followed swiftly as I didn't need to miss the next door she might enter. She reintroduced herself once again. I remember the name in the email notification and it is a pleasure sitting here with her, I replied. The accompanying smile on her face was all I needed to maintain my cool comportment. I mentioned her name in my acknowledgment of receipt and acceptance of the assessment invitation email. Okay, here we go, she was to conduct a behavioral interview after which they might set up a technical interview with their analyst on a later date. Okay. She started with the “tell me about yourself” question. I can say I like that particular question. Though this time, I started awkwardly with my name which was not part of my rehearsal. The question triggered symphonies in my head. It was just like first of all introduction — Olamide. I free-styled my degree, personality, data analysis related projects that I have done, and my interest & target in data-driven decision-making. She was holding my answer papers fastened together with the very first one that I did not finish on top. She asked another question from the incomplete ones, I smiled, it seems they are getting interested and wants to get my response on those unanswered questions. She went through almost all the questions after which she asked if I have any questions for her. Many of my questions have been answered even as I went through their website, yet, I was interested in knowing how some of their products could capture data that I found wasting (on a general assessment, we are trying in data capturing in the nation but in some specific areas, an enormous amount of important data are lost). In my experience in the field, collecting data, I wanted to know how they close that gap with one of their products that captures real-time data. She referred my question to my technical interviewer who I will meet in the next stage of the interview. Since getting to that level is still a probability, I decided to patronize the HR by asking about career growth in the organization which she said is possible to climb to any height in the office especially from data analyst to data scientist. The meeting was over and I left with a little clue that I might get through to the next level at least to get an answer to my weird question.
Invitation to the Technical Interview
The next day, I got a call to schedule a technical interview for the day after, barely within the next 21 hours. Okay, I will be available, thank you as I’m looking forward to seeing you tomorrow. I got restless immediately, got up and started walking around the room the question was: where am I supposed to start my preparation? I don’t like leaving any stone unturned. Since I use Excel for my visualization instead of tableau because tableau is expensive and not easy to come by, I started with Excel to recall how to do most tricky things, practiced data models and dashboard design. Who knows, they might place me in front of the computer to do practical test. I touched statistics related questions, I even forgot to touch Bayesian Regression and Naïve Bayes Algorithm. Hello! This is not a data scientist test please, just analyst, so calm down and focus on little things that matter. I also touched MySQL, searched for related questions online, got some based on topics like Statistics, Excel, Tableau, MySQL, Technical and Puzzle questions. The puzzle part was crazy, I decided not to even read that any further as it could leave me bamboozled, if such question shows up, then I will face it squarely. Luckily, nothing close to that came up during the interview. In a bid to beat traffic, I dropped from transit exactly 50 minutes to the time I was supposed to be at the office, and the office was 6 minutes drive away or 29 minutes on foot. I needed to be at the venue 15 minutes to my time, therefore, I should find somewhere to stay and I did not want to squat anywhere around the office location as there is no free zone within that area. I even used to go for evening walk most times which helps me to free my head and get some sort of diverse perception to any problem at hand. I choose to trek which will get me there in 29 minutes and exactly 19 minutes to the scheduled time. I was there 2 days ago but this time, things have changed like in one episode of Scorpion — a TV movie series Scorpion — where things change every now and then. I was examined with a handheld device for detecting, guess what, Covid-19. Yuck! I am sure nothing was found as I was directed to wash my hands under running water with liquid soap outside the main building. I was just smiling over the latest development which was as a result of the unprecedented pandemic all over the world. At this time, schools were being shut down and organizations put measures to keep a healthy working environment. The security came forth to unlock the smart door for me, not with fingerprint rather face detector; the fingerprint must have been deactivated because of almighty Covid-19. I finally met the receptionist 8 minutes earlier and was offered a seat where three other applicants were seated already. I sat for over an hour before been called up. I was busy going through the sample interview questions for data analyst position that I gathered online. Among other things, I noticed two people came around to follow-up on their previous assessment with the organization. Looking at my phone screen, reduced to the barest brightness, my ears were busy picking conversations around.
The Technical Interview
Okay guys, here we go again, prepare to meet your end — Moment of Truth by Tyles James Williams. Symphonies keeps entering my head! It was call-up time. Once again you know how it is, introduction. Afterward, she started with any data analysis project that I have done, then to my degree, that means you know the difference between correlation and regression? She asked. You won't believe that for whatever reason, I’m sure that I turned the explanation upside down. I used everything about regression to explain correlation and vice-versa. I felt the mix-up a bit which made me to note everything I said and checked it up after the session to confirm that I said everything correctly but gave it the wrong titles. Was that a slip of tongue? I don’t really know what she felt as she never talked about it. She asked me to define a database, followed by a dashboard, at least I could take a break with these. She went further to ask me the tools for data analysis, we had already mentioned Tableau and Excel in our conversation, so I added R console and Python. She asked if I had done any project with R and that is positive. Now mention operating systems. I could only remember iOS, Windows, Linux, and hardly remembered Ubuntu at last. The other questions I didn’t want to dive into immediately was database management system, I tried to understand what exactly the question wants to achieve. I mentioned only MySQL and Oracle, even MS Access could not come to my mind at that point. She asked about Tableau, I said I have not used tableau because I never had the opportunity to get access to the software. We then talked about indicators, problems faced by data analysts, methods of data collection, key features of a pivot table, and so on.
It was time for me to ask her questions. Reluctantly, I tried to rephrase my previous day question, who knows the HR might have told her and she was expectant, so I went ahead to ask the same question. She explained how one of their products was doing what I asked though not exactly how I wanted it. They do quarterly assessments and I was even looking at integrating such data collection as part of the reporters' daily activities. I quickly doubled my question by asking a personal question to know how she could define success in data analysis. She was interested in the integrity of the job. Her response reminded me of what we used to call “cooked data” which literally means fabricated data. An analyst presents a report, not the rigorous process involved, if the process is compromised, only the analysts know and this constitutes the integrity of the report. We called it a day and she said I should wait to hear from the HR if there is anything else for the day. While I was at the reception, she came and said that was all for the day, that they will contact me some other day. Okay. Could… still a probability. It was really an experience filled with mixed feelings all through.
