I applied through an employee referral. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at TikTok in Mar 2023
Interview
The interview was scheduled at 5pm PT because it was suppose to "accommodate interviewers from China side". The interviewer then showed up, but no self introduction, no company/team introduction. He just directly jumped into my resume and a leetcode question. I have to ask him to brief introduce the team at the end of the interview and he only answered with a few words. So I thought he was some tiktok tech guy from mainland China. Well, guess what, after the interview, that evening I was checking LinkedIn I found out that this interviewer was the hiring manger of the role! And he was in the west coast of the US! Why a hiring manager not introduce him and the team in the beginning of the interview ??? And why a hiring manager need to spend interview time on a leetcode problem ? I mean if you really need a job right now, then still go for it with your best. But if you want a stable and health career opportunity, you might need to think twice to join.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Go over resume, and one leetcode medium array quetion.
A former colleague referred me to the Data Scientist position at TikTok, which kicked off the interview process. The technical screen included a question about designing an A/B test for a ranking model, followed by an SQL challenge related to user sessions. The funny part was that the SQL problem was a twist on one I had been grinding through on PracHub just a few days prior. After some behavioral interviews, I received an offer, but ultimately decided to decline as it didn't align with my goals.
Interview questions [2]
Question 1
Walk me through how you'd design an A/B test for a new ranking model on the For You feed, and how you'd pick guardrail metrics.
Given a sessions table (user_id, session_start, session_end, country), write SQL to find the users whose average session length grew the most week-over-week.
I applied online. I interviewed at TikTok (London, England)
Interview
one medium level sql test and an open question
Since i'm not familiar with business context(though i actually spent time preparing AB test and causal inference), i didn't get what i should answer.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
if tiktok shop is going to launch in Netherland, how to evaluate it before AB test
Data Scientist applicants have rated the interview process at TikTok with 3.2 out of 5 (where 5 is the highest level of difficulty) and assessed their interview experience as 29% positive. To compare, the company-average is 37.3% positive. This is according to Glassdoor user ratings.
Candidates applying for Data Scientist roles take an average of 20 days to get hired, when considering 117 user submitted interviews for this role. To compare, the hiring process at TikTok overall takes an average of 30 days.
Common stages of the interview process at TikTok as a Data Scientist according to 117 Glassdoor interviews include:
One on one interview: 34%
Skills test: 26%
Phone interview: 19%
Background check: 7%
Presentation: 5%
Other: 3%
Personality test: 2%
Group panel interview: 1%
Drug test: 1%
IQ intelligence test: 1%
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