I applied online. I interviewed at Cogitativo in May 2021
Interview
Started off with a nice and brief chat with the cofounder/chief data science officer. Afterwards, he sent along a programming assignment, which I completed and sent back in about 10 days. However, after 2 weeks of trying to get a follow-up meeting, he responded back saying they were trying to hire someone more senior. What a waste of time. Totally unprofessional.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
The programming assignment was related to trying to predict strokes using fake EMR data.
I applied through university. I interviewed at Cogitativo
Interview
After completing an initial technical challenge with a dataset they sent me within a week of receiving it, I was contacted again and went in for a scheduled 2 hour interview at Berkeley, CA. Sat down with 2 of their data scientists and chatted about my previous data science projects. Interviewers were generally supportive and helpful throughout the interview and we walked through the technical questions together, although felt like I was getting too much help at times. Discussed some potential projects and asked me for feedback to see what I was interested in. Had a "pop quiz" at the end with basic programming and probability questions. Interview ended early, and another data scientist popped by to say hi! Very friendly environment.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Basic coding algorithms and good coding practice, one probability problem. Also my approach for model building.
I applied online. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Cogitativo (Berkeley, CA) in Jan 2017
Interview
I applied to Cogitativo in January 2017. I had a phone interview a few days later where Gary, the CEO, talked about the company and asked about my background. Next, I completed a data science challenge based on their healthcare data. Then I went to an onsite interview in Berkeley where I met Gary and his team. They discussed the company, asked about my background (PhD + ~1 year as a data scientist) as well as some general data science/stats concept questions.
A few days later, I received a call from Gary. He said they were interested in hiring me and said he would follow-up by email with the paper offer. Then, I did not hear from him for a few days. Next, he emailed asking for a follow-up call. In this follow-up call he said he accidentally offered me the "Senior Data Scientist" position instead of the "Data Scientist" position, which has a lower salary. I'm not sure how this mistake was made, as I had previously talked at length with Gary and his team about my background. He again said that he would follow-up with a paper offer and ask for a response to his offer within the week. I didn't receive a paper offer, so I emailed ~4 days later. I received no response. I then emailed again the day before "my response was due". I received a response saying that they were no longer interested in hiring me and wanted to find somebody more senior.
That was the end of my communication with Cogitativo.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Mostly just background, a statistics question, general machine learning concept questions