Data Scientist applicants have rated the interview process at Instacart with 3.1 out of 5 (where 5 is the highest level of difficulty) and assessed their interview experience as 38% positive. To compare, the company-average is 46.3% positive. This is according to Glassdoor user ratings.
Candidates applying for Data Scientist roles take an average of 17 days to get hired, when considering 21 user submitted interviews for this role. To compare, the hiring process at Instacart overall takes an average of 16 days.
Common stages of the interview process at Instacart as a Data Scientist according to 21 Glassdoor interviews include:
Phone interview: 29%
One on one interview: 18%
Skills test: 18%
Presentation: 12%
Group panel interview: 10%
Background check: 8%
Drug test: 2%
Personality test: 2%
Other: 2%
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Faced a deep technical challenge during the interview, asked to design a personalization algorithm for product recommendations. I walked them through feature engineering and model choices, which stressed me out initially. Luckily, I realized the structure was almost identical to a problem I had explored on prachub.com while prepping. The interview progressed through a behavioral round where they focused on my previous experiences, and I ultimately received an offer, but decided to decline after careful consideration. Overall, it was intense but rewarding.
No offer
Positive experience
Difficult interview
Application
I applied through an employee referral. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Instacart (San Francisco, CA) in May 2016
Interview
I was referred by an acquaintance and quickly contacted by a recruiter. We had an initial chat where he was honest that my background was likely not technical enough for the role, but I was welcome to attempt the coding challenge. I did, and the coding challenge was a timed test mainly on predictive modeling.
After the test I was again contacted by the recruiter to set up a phone interview with the head of data science. During the phone interview it was clear the interviewer had spent time looking at my past work and asked highly detailed questions about my work, and how I may have gone about certain tasks differently.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
How might you have optimized parameters for this model differently?
It was pretty straightforward. HR and then technicals. The technicals were a mix of statistics and math questions. Overall, it moved pretty quickly. My interviewer was quite late with no apology and in general not very friendly. I knew someone interviewing at the same time and they had a much better experience and recieved the same questions.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Suppose we wanted to launch 15-minute deliveries in a specific area where we already deliver. How would you statistically test the results?