Forget The Technicals, This Is What You Should Be Looking For In a Data Scientist!

At JamieAi, we recognise that assessing a candidate’s technical capabilities and experience ranks highly when assessing the suitably of a candidate for a role. However, hiring an individual on their technical capabilities alone is unlikely to lead to a successful long term hire.

Therefore, we have developed a four step guide to interviewing data scientists that highlights what helps you to employ the talent you need for long term success. To ensure the most successful outcome, we believe that interviews should be as personalised as possible. Every candidate is different, so it is not effective to assess them all the same way.

Also, when implementing the tips below, remember that -although an interview tends to be a formal situation- you want to keep it as conversational as possible. This approach is likely to make the candidate feel more relaxed, and that way it is easier to observe their true personality traits and characteristics.

Step One: Why are they here?

Why has the candidate decided to sit in front of you today? What do they think this job will do for their career, more responsibility perhaps? Or are they simply looking for a change? Answers to these questions shel light on the candidates motivations, helping you to progress with your hiring process.

So rather than asking “why did you apply to work here”, ask: “what responsibilities would you be looking for in this position”. This centres the question around the specific job they are applying for, rather than what the company does, and it is important to determine whether or not they are interested in the role they will be expected to perform.

Step Two: What type of candidate are they?

You need to find out what type of person you are interviewing, and this primarily centres around their weaknesses and strengths. Discovering these traits early on can help you shape your questions for the rest of the interview to define how best the individual would perform within your organisation.

You should never jump in with the generic “what can you tell me about yourself?” as this implies to the candidate that you haven’t taken the time to read their CV. Instead, ask about something that you think stood out of their CV, one of their projects for example; and ask what they found most interesting/compelling about that project. This way you can find out which areas of their previous job they enjoyed the most, and this can help you to assess whether they can utilise these skills in the role at your firm.

Now you know what they can do, you need to find out what they can’t. Never ever ask: “What is your biggest weakness?”. No candidate likes this question and it rarely results in a beneficial or insightful answer. So best to avoid at all costs!

Instead, ask them to explain a challenge they have faced in their career, or even better; a time where they weren’t as successful at a project as they had hoped. This will reveal some important traits about the candidate: are they able to take responsibility for their actions and mistakes? Are they the type of candidate who is able to bounce back from setbacks? This will also cause them to think, be self reflective and also show how they deal with criticism and apportion blame.

Step Three: What can they do for us?

Technical questions are always important to ensure that someone is capable of performing successfully in the role, but remember to treat every candidate as an individual, with different skills and a different personality.

With this in mind, whilst some interview techniques may bring out the best in some candidates, they may not be so successful for others. A successful way of evaluating a certain candidate’s skill set could be to ask a them to perform a task under time conditions. Alternatively, for those applicants who are working in a role where there are less likely to be exposed to highly pressurised situations, offering them the opportunity to complete a project based test over a day or two, could be more beneficial.

This approach enables the candidate to display their skills, where they wouldn’t be able to in an interview, and it also shows the employer how well they can work in an environment that best simulates that of the role.

Step Four: Are you right for the job?

Having established what the candidate is (and is not) capable of, you need to decide whether they are right for the job, and what makes them different to the other candidates. This isn’t necessarily about their academic capabilities, this is about why you want them to work for you. What qualities do they have that stand out and fit within your organisation?

Always consider the team as a factor of your decision, think about how the candidate has conversed with you throughout the interview, as this will indicate how well they will fit in with the other employees? If you aren’t sure, then bring the team in for a discussion about a problem you are trying to solve, and see how the candidate engages with everyone. Also consider that people often like to hire versions of themselves: but you don’t need a band of minions, you need the right person for the job — getting team consensus can prove crucial for a long term hiring success.

Although there is no definitive path to ensuring you have hired the right candidate, taking a more holistic approach and considering their motivation, passion, skill set, personality type and way of thinking, helps to improve your success ratio!

I hope you have found some of these tips useful, and feel free to email us with any tips you think are important that we have missed out. Also, we would love to hear of any interesting interview experiences you’ve had; what are the worst interview question you’ve been asked? What are the worst answers you’ve received?