It’s common these days to receive a take home data science/analytics challenge; So, Here are five tips for cracking the challenge:

Understand the goal of the challenge: Take home challenges helps hiring manager test your business acumen & technical skills — it’s a great way for them to test how you approach a business problem and solve it using data. It’s important to recognize that the case study challenge is as much about testing your business acumen as it is to test your technical skills. Leverage your past experience solving a problem: If you are an experienced candidate then you should be able to use your past experience in solving similar challenges; And if you don’t have some experience then we encourage you to practice some case-studies. Don’t skip any part of the Data Science process: There are multiple steps to solving a data science problem. So while solving the case study, make sure that you consider all parts. Start off with some data cleaning. Also, spend some time on feature engineering. Don’t just focus a lot of optimizing your model — that’s important but all the steps need equal love! And make sure you document all of that so that your interviewer knows that you have are familiar with all the steps in the data science process. Double check your output: After completing the case study, make sure to double-check the output and your recommended action. This is your chance to fix any major gaps in your work; It’s your chance to run your work through a checklist like this one to make sure it gets passing marks! Anticipate follow-up questions: You might also want to anticipate follow-up questions on your work. Things like: How you considered doing X? Why did you select algorithm X over Y? Did you find any data quality issues? Anticipating follow-up questions allows you to improve your work before you submit it.



Additional resources:

[Quora] Data Science: What are some ways to prepare for a “data challenge” with a Silicon Valley tech company?

We hope this helps! And if you want to practice interview sessions, then sign up now! URL: MockInterview.co

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