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All interview stages

Interviewing has different stages. I have divided them in 3 main ones - core preparation, warm-up mindset + applications, interviewing + negotiation. For each of the steps below you need to prepare Jira tickets and complete them in order. Expected time needed to find new job: 5 months.

  1. Preparation for interviews (2 months)

    • algo: neetcode.io + leetcode targeted for companies, cracking the coding interview book
    • reherse talking out load when solving problems, check steps in CTCI book when explaining your solution to a problem
    • system design: System Design, practice in excalidraw
    • ml design: stefan's escalidraw example is pretty good
    • probability: puzzle's app, 3 quant books
    • stats: Probability and Statistics
    • skim job descriptions to check tech stacks and requirements
    • Think about what you want to have in your CV (avoind flufing, Practice and guide has CV screening from hiring manager's perspective)

  2. Prepare for behavior questions + leadership principles (2 weeks)

    • stories for each of your jobs - starting point is your Job search folder
    • lp principles file from stefan is good
    • cracking the coding interview book
    • why you james reed book
    • Behaviour

  3. Prepare good CV (3 days)

    • one for engineering (for MLE)
    • one for data science (math + stats stuff)
    • before you apply for each position check in LinkdIN what people working at this position have in their CV
    • this step often will improve through iteration, as you apply to companies and talk stuff you will add/change your CV

  4. Apply at bunch of companies (2 weeks)

    • timing is key here to get competing offers
    • colllect a list of companies you want to apply for before hand
      • LinkdIn, your previous applications, Referalls (from friends and random Blind users + write a Blind Post), Linkdin recruiters, email recruiters
    • roles to aim for: quant, quant devs, data science, algo engineers, machine learning engineer
    • prepare applications for all of them, don't apply yet! (some may need motivation letters or random stupid questions)
    • prepare messages/talk with recruiters (see Talk with recruiters, define what you want in terms of role, company, TC
    • apply at all companies all at once

  5. Mock interviews for System Design and ML Design.

  6. Arrange interviews

    • pretty dynamic step, some companies will push for earlier interviews, often with recruiters is like that.

  7. Prepare company specific stuff

    • after you get interviews for each company you will need to prepare company specific stuff

  8. Do the interviews

    • see Self evaluation for past interview experience
    • take notes during each interview to remember company specific stuff

  9. Offer Negotiation

  10. Post offer

    • do self evaluation of the whole interview cycle and update Self evaluation
    • gather all your notes and put in dendron

Steps 1-2 (core preparation) take most of the time (2-months) and depends on your current interview prep state. Although this takes most of your time in the interviewing cycle it is actually the part you would enjoy the most as it is about solving problems. Make sure you spend proper time on behaviour practice too.

Steps 3-5 (warm-up stage + applications) take about 2-4 weeks. This part is the shortest one. Key here is to adjust your mindset to interview mode. Mocks with friends or paid one help. Also this part includes lots of admin work to make applications. Although it could be tedious it is super important as it gets you the interviews. Make sure you spend enough time on the applications. Need to pull out all your connections for referals, ask Blind for referrals, write to recruiters.

Steps 6-10 (interviewing + negotiation) form the stage where you apply what you have been practicing for. These four steps are dynamic and less structured. Your goal is to finish them in the span of 1 to 2 months (at most). Main goal is to have competing offers with similar deadlines. Key in this stage is that after doing lots of interviews you might get tired and will be tempted to accept the first descent offer you get. Be willing to put the extra effort to get competing offers as it could pay out pretty well for just a few weeks more of interviewing. Also accepting a job offer means you will be doing that at least a year, and cannot go back quickly to interview mode and increase TC.

Principles

  • Interviews are ultimately NOT about you. They'd ask lots of questions about you, but they are not interested in you.
  • Job is about solving the problems of the employer. It is not for you to make money. It is for you to solve problems.
  • Interview is a chat between two human beings figuring out if they have common interests.
  • Show genuine interest in the company and the role. Ask Questions!
  • Talk with excitetment! Chris Deloit from Kaggle.

CV updates

  • change Applied GBM to another verb
  • need to convey message that you are DS/SDE
  • Two CV-s DS and SDE (HIT THE KEYWORDS!), make a list of key words you need to hit
  • add that you are currently in the DS team
  • Built internal app
  • add ML as keywords in more places
  • data pipeline at Transmetrics (ML pipeline)

Google Prep

One of my favorite (and slightly underrated) interview prep tricks?

Google.

I’ll search for anything tied to the company—those that overlap with my area of work.

If I’m prepping for an interview at Amazon, my search history will look something like: -> “Amazon A/B testing” -> “Amazon experiments” -> “Amazon metrics” -> “Amazon data science” -> "Amazon business model"

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