Fireside Chats – Hands on Interview(Technical Questions) Workshop with Lina Van

The last Fireside Chat of our Data for Hope™ Education Program was the workshop focused on strategies to navigate technical interviews successfully. Technical interviews can make anyone nervous, but they are not so radically different from behavioral interviews in essence. Both will emphasize a candidate’s ability to explain and clearly walk through problems.

The key takeaways are:

• Create an effective study system to review key concepts. Flash cards, writing, and re-reading materials are all good strategies. 
• Read through question banks for technical interviews that focus on the role you are applying for, and make sure you can answer them. Useful resources include Youtube videos on case studies, and articles in Medium and Kaggle. Talk the talk to walk the walk!
• Practice being concise and using domain-relevant language. For factual questions (e.g., “what is a normal distribution?”), try to answer in a format that ties in your previous work experience along with the cut-and-dry answer. For questions regarding experience and projects, use the STAR format (Situation, Task, Action, Result) much as possible. Have at least 3 projects to cite for the STAR method!
• You must be able to deep dive into every single aspect of your work experience. For example, an interviewer could easily take ten minutes to talk about data preprocessing.
• Try to set up mock interviews with mentors and ask for feedback.