NextBee Media Data Scientist interview questions

I have never seen a company as unorganised as this. They had no idea what they wanted at all. They want you to be a master of all at once. I first had a call with the recruiter, and I was asked some basic behavioural questions and some questions based on my resume and background. I was then given a take home exercise to complete. Once I finished that, I got scheduled for a call with a machine learning engineer. I had a good solid one hour conversation with the engineer and was very impressed with him. The unprofessionalism started after this round. I was reached out by another employee who set up my interview with a developer. I was given a “gotomeet” link for a virtual interview, but when I entered the meeting room at the scheduled time, I saw that there was already a meeting going on, probably their employees with the clients. I then reached out to the recruiter again who asked me to not join the link and asked me for my Skype id. I was then connected to the interviewer on skype and we started the conversation over there. Another funny part was that the interviewer probably did not know what he was interviewing me for. I was being considered for Data scientist/project manager role, but the interview asked me if I was interested in web development, and started asking me questions related to web development. Even funnier, they did not even have a set of questions to interview me. He was “trying” to explain me the database structure for the Sql related questions and asked me to type out the code on skype chat. I don’t know how much effort it would take for them to make a google sheet and share that at least. I would be able to understand the questions and answer better. I don’t know how they expect to verbally tell me the questions on call and ask me to write the code on Skype chat. I got very furious and asked the interviewer to at least type out what he wanted from me since the communication got very difficult and he was not clear with his questions, therefore I wasn’t able to answer them as expected. He started typing out the database structure and requirements for me. He then went to the next question, and I was answering based on the database structure he provided me with in the previous question, since he did not mention that the database structure was changed for the second question. All this was still a verbal conversation and I wasn’t given access to any document, screenshots or database structure. He tells me that I’m answering keeping in mind the database structure of the previous question and that “the structure has been changed”. He then asked me to write a basic PHP code and send him a message on Skype after we disconnected the call and he would then evaluate and make a decision. It was weird, but I did that and never heard back thereafter. After speaking with a potential candidate over so many days, they never even got back to me. This has definitely been the most negative interview experience I have ever had in my life. At first, it seemed really good but the last interview call was very stupid. The minimum you expect is for the interviewer to know what he is interviewing you for, and to have an organised set of questions at least, when you want the candidate to write down Sql or any other code for you. I was very excited for interviewing with this company, but ended up being the biggest turn off for me. I wish the company stayed a bit more organised, professional and interviewed potential candidates on what they applied for.

The interview process was extremely entertaining, bizarre, humiliating... ultimately infuriating. I think future candidates should all read this through... After talking to the recruiter(well, they don't really have a recruiter; people in this company wear multiple hats...), I was assigned an exercise with 4 questions, then a phone interview with the hiring manager, and then an online coding interview, then on-site(on-site didn't happen...). Take-home exercise got a very weird question (the first one). Online ML/SQL questions are easy. However, when I was expecting the on-site interview, they sent me such an email: "Thank you for taking out the time attending the interview for the Data Scientist position at NextBee, Based on the feedback of our team - you have potential but you seem to be not ready to have production-ready code. So we can offer you a paid internship until the end of the year. If you prove yourself - we will be more than happy to give full-time offer otherwise extend internship. During internship the pay will be $2,000 per month. We expect you to work full time for 40 hrs per week and do regular work but also learn technologies related to machine learning, statistics, and SQL/database systems." I got totally confused. Are they seriously hiring data scientists?! They didn't test any of my coding capabilities except for some very simple SQL queries. And I didn't have on-site interviews at all... So I turned down this unusual "offer" and expressed my disappointment with their unprofessionalism. Surprisingly, I got a more funny email from them.. they explained what they wanted was a 'senior level' DS, so I was not qualified. And they said that "Having said that and again not as anyway compensation for the time and energy you spent on the interview process - we will like to send you a $25 electronic gift card such as Amazon or Starbucks or Apple. If you let me know your preference - I will get that sent over right away. " They purposefully concealed the information that they were looking for a data scientist intern at an hourly wage of $12.5. However, it is very clear from the job description that they were hiring a full-time employee at a salary range of 100k to 150k per annum. They did not disclose the information to me until after the 4th round of interviews, which wasted a lot of my time and efforts.