OKCupid Data Scientist | October 2020

Company: OKCupid

Position: Data Scientist

Location: nan

Level: Mid-level

Outcome: Techncal Screen Rejected

How was the interview process? What was it like?

Overall, I thought interviewing at OKCupid was a great experience. I was one of my first data science interviews post-pandemic and it felt as seamless as an in-person interview. It began with the Recruiter screening, then I had an hour call with the Hiring Manager where we talked about ML and the libraries we liked, then came the technical assessment. They said used to be a take-home (which I prefer) but had changed to in-person last year (though currently via Zoom) because they found that take-homes hadn't been adequately vetting their data candidates). It was an hour, where they asked 3-5 SQL questions (however many you got through in 30 min) and 1-2 Python questions. I heard back from them a few days after the assessment the recruiter reached out to inform me that, while my Python was adequate, I didn't complete the SQL efficiently enough for their liking so they were going to move forward with another applicant. Their decision made sense, my SQL is just so-so.

What technical questions were asked?

Python / Pandas, Data Structures and Algorithms, SQL / Analytics

What was one of your solutions?

def count_substring(string, n):

    output = {}

    for i in range(len(string)-1):

        gram = string[i:i+n]

        if (gram not in output):

            output[gram] = 1

        else:

            output[gram] += 1

    return output