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      Data Scientist Interview

      Jul 23, 2017
      Anonymous interview candidate
      San Francisco, CA
      No offer
      Negative experience
      Average interview

      Application

      I applied in-person. I interviewed at Affirm (San Francisco, CA) in Apr 2017

      Interview

      TL;DR, I expected a hot growth-stage company run by experienced founders and employees to have a professional interview process and was disappointed. It's NOT acceptable to keep a candidate waiting a whole month for an official answer after the onsite interview. I interviewed for a BI/analytics-oriented data science role in spring 2017. I applied through a recruiter I met at an event in SF and had a quick recruiter phone screen, as well as a 30 minute phone call with the hiring manager. After completing a fairly standard take home data challenge, I went in for an onsite that lasted about a half day. The interview itself was more or less fine - some of the discussions around Affirm's business and product were interesting, and the people were very friendly, although I got the sense that the role didn't align well with my interests. One interview slot consisted entirely of whiteboarding complex SQL queries, which was a real head-scratcher. At the end of the day I didn't really feel like i had great rapport with the interviewers or that I was being evaluated on technical/domain knowledge useful to solving real problems. My real issue with the process was the unreliable communication with the recruiting team. At the end of the onsite I sat in my room for ~20 minutes wondering whether it was OK to leave, and had to call one of the contacts on the candidate sheet to get the go-ahead. Also, it took Affirm about 2 weeks just to review the take-home exercise, which is kind of excessive as well. And who keeps an interview candidate in the dark for a whole month after the onsite? Obviously at that point it's a rejection, but it's simply rude and downright unprofessional. My message would be to stop treating recruiting and interviewing as a cost center and really invest in the people and process.

      Interview questions [1]

      Question 1

      Please walk me through how you would solve [business problem] using [some complex SQL query using multiple joins and a counting trick].
      Answer question
      3

      Other Data Scientist interview reviews for Affirm

      Data Scientist Interview

      Oct 7, 2019
      Anonymous employee
      Accepted offer
      Positive experience
      Difficult interview

      Application

      I applied through an employee referral. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Affirm

      Interview

      One phone screen and one on-site technical interview. Phone screen was on feature interpretation of machine learning models. On-site was 5 hours, with technical and theory questions. The technical were really nice because they gave a real data set to play with. This is a key difference from other companies and gave me a sense that they understand what data scientists do. Whiteboarding with data, in my opinion, is just nonsense. You have to see and visualize the data to understand it and what issues you may have with it. The theory questions were fairly standard stats/machine learning questions, though some were tricky. I left the interview with a good impression of the company and with the feeling that they understand the role of data scientists within the company.

      Interview questions [1]

      Question 1

      Here's data in tabular format, import, explore the data, and build a baseline classifier.
      1 Answer
      1
      avatar
      Affirm response
      6y
      Thanks so much for taking the time to leave a review. We strive to provide a positive and engaging interview experience for all candidates, and we’re glad to hear you left with a good impression!

      Data Scientist Interview

      Dec 14, 2019
      Anonymous interview candidate
      No offer
      Neutral experience
      Average interview

      Application

      The process took 1+ week. I interviewed at Affirm in Jul 2019

      Interview

      Their recruiter contacted me. We talked over the phone briefly and they scheduled a call with one of the team members. The second call was ok. We spent lots of time convincing each other about our understanding of some ML techniques. After one day, recruiter sent me rejection message.

      Interview questions [1]

      Question 1

      How we can measure the importance of features in regression? and then some special cases.
      1 Answer
      avatar
      Affirm response
      6y
      Thanks so much for sharing your feedback. We wish you the best of luck in your search.

      Data Scientist Interview

      Nov 8, 2018
      Anonymous interview candidate
      No offer
      Negative experience
      Difficult interview

      Application

      I applied through an employee referral. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Affirm

      Interview

      I had a great recruiter interview. But the second round was really awkward. At first, they missed my call and rescheduled it after 40 minutes of original time has passed. The rescheduled call wasn't very good either. The interviewer shows zero patience and seems to be pretty pissed when I can't answer the question. I was constantly talked over when I was struggling with the questions. Overall it was a disappointment after that great recruiter call
      2
      avatar
      Affirm response
      7y
      Thanks so much for taking the time to leave a review. We strive to provide a positive and engaging interview experience for all candidates and we’re sorry to hear your time with us did not reflect this.

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