Dollar General is a leading American chain of variety stores, renowned for its mission to provide convenience and value to customers. Established in 1939, it has grown significantly, now boasting over 17,000 locations across the United States.

Stepping into Dollar General as a Business Intelligence professional offers a challenging yet rewarding experience. This role is pivotal in transforming data into actionable insights that drive business strategies and operational efficiency. The position demands proficiency in data analysis, SQL, data visualization tools, and strong problem-solving skills. As a Business Intelligence specialist, you will collaborate closely with various departments to enhance decision-making processes and contribute to the company's growth trajectory.

If you are considering joining Dollar General in this pivotal role, this guide by Interview Query is tailored for you. It will provide an overview of the interview process, share common questions, and offer tips to help you succeed. Let’s dive in!

Submitting Your Application

The first step is to submit a compelling application that reflects your technical skills and interest in joining Dollar General as a Business Intelligence professional. Whether you were contacted by a Dollar General recruiter or have taken the initiative yourself, carefully review the job description and tailor your CV according to the prerequisites.

Tailoring your CV may include identifying specific keywords that the hiring manager might use to filter resumes and crafting a targeted cover letter. Furthermore, don’t forget to highlight relevant skills and mention your work experiences.

Recruiter/Hiring Manager Call Screening

If your CV happens to be among the shortlisted few, a recruiter from the Dollar General Talent Acquisition Team will make contact and verify key details like your experiences and skill level. Behavioral questions may also be a part of the screening process.

In some cases, the Dollar General Business Intelligence hiring manager stays present during the screening round to answer your queries about the role and the company itself. They may also indulge in surface-level technical and behavioral discussions.

The whole recruiter call should take about 30 minutes.

Technical Virtual Interview

Successfully navigating the recruiter round will present you with an invitation for the technical screening round. Technical screening for the Dollar General Business Intelligence role usually is conducted virtually, including video conferences and screen sharing. Questions in this 1-hour long interview stage may revolve around Dollar General’s data systems, ETL pipelines, and SQL queries.

In the case of Business Intelligence roles, take-home assignments regarding data analytics, business metrics, and data visualization may be incorporated. Apart from these, your proficiency in hypothesis testing, probability distributions, and data modeling fundamentals may also be assessed during the round.

Depending on the seniority of the position, case studies and similar real-scenario problems may also be assigned.

Onsite Interview Rounds

Followed by a second recruiter call outlining the next stage, you’ll be invited to attend the onsite interview loop. Multiple interview rounds, varying with the role, will be conducted during your day at the Dollar General office. Your technical prowess, including programming and BI tool capabilities, will be evaluated against the finalized candidates throughout these interviews.

If you were assigned take-home exercises, a presentation round may also await you during the onsite interview for the Business Intelligence role at Dollar General.

Quick Tips For Dollar General Business Intelligence Interviews

Here are a few tips for acing your Dollar General interview:

• Understand The Retail Industry: Dollar General places a high value on relevant industry knowledge. Be prepared to discuss retail-specific analytics and how your BI skills can drive decisions in this context.
• Be Data-Driven: Business Intelligence roles at Dollar General assess how you can provide business-driving insights with data. Brush up on your knowledge of statistics, data visualization, and BI tools.
• Cultural Fit Matters: Dollar General values a collaborative work environment. Practice responding to behavioral questions with answers that highlight your teamwork, innovation, and alignment with company values.

Typically, interviews at Dollar General vary by role and team, but commonly Business Intelligence interviews follow a fairly standardized process across these question topics.

• Create a function recurring_char to find the first recurring character in a string. Given a string, write a function recurring_char to find its first recurring character. Return None if there is no recurring character. Treat upper and lower case letters as distinct characters. Assume the input string includes no spaces.

• Write a query to get the average order value by gender. Given three tables representing customer transactions and customer attributes, write a query to get the average order value by gender. Round your answer to two decimal places.

• Identify first-time and repeat purchases by product category. Analyze a user's purchases to identify which purchases represent the first time the user has bought a product from its category and which represent repeat purchases. Output a table including every purchase with a boolean column indicating if it’s a repeat purchase.

• Parse the most frequent words used in poems. Given a list of strings called sentences, return a dictionary of the frequency that words are used in the poem. Process all words as lowercase and ignore punctuation marks.

• Write a SQL query to select the 2nd highest salary in the engineering department. Write a SQL query to select the 2nd highest salary in the engineering department. If more than one person shares the highest salary, select the next highest salary.

• How would you address a 10% decline in friend requests on Facebook? A product manager at Facebook reports a 10% decrease in friend requests. What steps would you take to investigate and address this issue?

• How would you set up an A/B test for changes in a sign-up funnel? A team wants to A/B test changes in a sign-up funnel, such as changing a button from red to blue and/or moving it from the top to the bottom of the page. How would you design this test?

• What metrics would you use to evaluate the value of marketing channels for Mode? Given all the different marketing channels and their respective costs at Mode, a company selling B2B analytics dashboards, what metrics would you use to determine the value of each marketing channel?

• How would you measure the success of a banner ad strategy for an online media company? An online media company wants to experiment with adding web banners in the middle of its reading content to monetize effectively. How would you measure the success of this banner ad strategy?

• How would you investigate a drop in Facebook posts per user? The Facebook posting tool shows a drop from 3% posts per user last month to 2.5% today. How would you investigate this issue? If the drop is in photo posts, what additional steps would you take?

• How would you interpret coefficients of logistic regression for categorical and boolean variables? Explain how to interpret the coefficients of logistic regression when dealing with categorical and boolean variables.

• What is the difference between covariance and correlation? Provide an example. Describe the difference between covariance and correlation, and provide an example to illustrate the distinction.

• What are time series models? Why do we need them when we have less complicated regression models? Explain what time series models are and why they are necessary despite the availability of simpler regression models.

• How would you determine if the difference between this month and the previous month in a time series dataset is significant? Given a time series dataset grouped monthly for the past five years, describe how you would assess if the difference between this month and the previous month is significant.

• How would you address a manager's complaint about a packet filling machine not functioning correctly? A manager reports that a machine designed to fill boxes with 25 packets is malfunctioning, resulting in incorrect packet counts. Describe how you would investigate and resolve this issue.

• How does random forest generate the forest and why use it over logistic regression? Explain the process of how random forest generates multiple decision trees and aggregates their results. Discuss the advantages of using random forest over logistic regression, such as handling non-linear data and reducing overfitting.

• How would you justify using a neural network model and explain predictions to non-technical stakeholders? Describe the business problem and the benefits of using a neural network model. Explain how you would communicate the model's complexity and predictions in simple terms to non-technical stakeholders.

• How would you interpret coefficients of logistic regression for categorical and boolean variables? Explain the interpretation of logistic regression coefficients for categorical variables (using dummy coding) and boolean variables, focusing on the odds ratio and its impact on the dependent variable.

• Which model would perform better for predicting Airbnb booking prices: linear regression or random forest regression? Compare the performance of linear regression and random forest regression for predicting booking prices on Airbnb. Discuss factors like model complexity, handling of non-linear relationships, and feature interactions.

• What are the assumptions of linear regression? List and explain the key assumptions of linear regression, including linearity, independence, homoscedasticity, normality of residuals, and absence of multicollinearity.

As you prepare for a Business Intelligence position at Dollar General, gaining insights into the company's interview process can be crucial. To help you navigate and succeed in this journey, we recommend checking out our main Dollar General Interview Guide, where we cover many interview questions that could be asked. We've also created interview guides for other roles, such as software engineer and data analyst, where you can learn more about Dollar General's interview process for different positions.

At Interview Query, we empower you to unlock your interview prowess with a comprehensive toolkit, equipping you with the knowledge, confidence, and strategic guidance to conquer every Dollar General Business Intelligence interview question and challenge.

You can check out all our company interview guides for better preparation, and if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to us.

Good luck with your interview!