Data Analyst Interview Prep
You sent in your resume and you got a call back - now is your show to impress them and land that job! In this section we will discuss how and what to prepare for your interview.
Steps to Prepare for the Interview
1. Practice Standard Interview Questions
2. Research The Company
3. Practice Technical Interview Questions
1. Practice Standard Interview Questions
Standard interview questions are the questions you'll get asked in almost any interview regardless of the role. These are some of the first questions you'll be asked in an interview and I highly recommend coming prepared.
Here are some you'll get almost every interview:
1. Tell me about yourself.
2. What is your greatest weakness?
3. Give me an example of when you failed.
4. Why do you think you'd be a good fit for this position?
5. Why do you want to leave your current position?
6. Do you prefer working independently or on a team?
7. Where do you see yourself in 5 years? (I hate this question)
I like to practice these and even have something written down for them. There are 100 different resources to find good answers to these questions so I will link some below.
- 10 Most Common Interview Questions and Answers
2. Research The Company
This part is one that people often don't do and it can really hurt them. Researching the company will allow you to have better insights into their company, their culture, and their products. It will allow you to cater your answer to the company you are interviewing with which can be a huge boost during an interview.
Here are some things you should look into:
1. What kind of data do they work with?
- Are they working with healthcare, banking, financial, ecommerce data?
2. What is their culture and values?
3. What products do they have and what value do they bring?
4. What are they currently paying their Data Analysts?
- I find Glassdoor to have pretty accurate salary ranges. If it's a smaller company they may not have much information.
Overall, the more you know about the company, their products, and their culture, the better you'll be able to cater your answers for that specific job.
3. Practice Technical Interview Questions
In any Data Analyst job there is a chance you'll receive either a technical exam during your interview or a take home project to work on. Both are designed to test your abilities in a specific technical skill and determine whether you meet their standards to hire you on.
Failing this part of the interview will most likely lead to no offer being made.
Typically, but not always, they are going to test you on SQL, a BI tool, or Python. If the job has another tool they require in the job description it may be that one.
I've probably gone through 40+ technical exams when looking for jobs and they break out somewhere like this:
- 35 SQL Technical Interviews
- 4 Python Technical Interviews
- 1 Tableau Technical Interview
This a rough estimation, but fairly accurate. With that being said I highly recommend studying technical interview questions on mostly SQL and some Python
Here are 2 places you can go to study for free:
StrataScratch has an entire "Freemium" section where you can study SQL or Python problems. This would be my number one recommendation.
Leetcode is also good, but is more geared towards software engineers. They do have a good "Database" section to practice SQL, but it's not as extensive as StrataScratch.
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