How To Prepare For An Analytics Job Interview At Facebook

This page may be out of date. Save your draft before refreshing this page.Submit any pending changes before refreshing this page.

I have been invited to an interview for a Marketing Science Analytics role for FB. This is the second time they have shortlisted my CV , and this time around I didn't even apply. Last time i cleared the phone screen, but got weeded out in the online quiz round. The questions were related to SQL, probability and one essay ("what would you do..." type ). So while I know what I am up against this time, I still dont know how to go about preparing for it. I am a junior level data scientist.......but I dont really use SQL (the DBA gets me the data) , and no one really 'uses' those typical tricky probability questions in their jobs....any advice? Thanks in advance.

Your Facebook recruiter will be able to tell you what to prepare for your interview. Broadly, the data analytics interview will consist of questions in some or all of the areas of Analytics, Coding, Probability, Statistics, Machine Learning and Algorithms. Questions might vary in difficulty level depending on the role and your experience, but are definitely non-trivial. (For example, you won't have interviewers merely testing superficial knowledge such as the formula for a hypothesis test.) That doesn't mean you have to have a PhD to answer those questions, but you need a solid understanding of fundamentals.

The Analytics area might have case studies based on real-life data. There is no straightforward way to "prepare" for this; you have to be good analytically or worked on similar problems in the past. Using the product and critically thinking about it will also help here. For coding, you "may be" able to get a choice between SQL and other programming languages. However, as far as I know, you cannot totally get away from SQL once you take up the job. Infact, a lot of tech companies value that skill, so learning SQL will only help in the future. There are quite a few online resources to learn and practice basic to advanced SQL. Pick a few and practice as much as you can.

As for probability/stats/algorithms questions, revisit your school textbooks, or utilize online resources again. In many ways, this is similar to preparing for an engineering interview. There are several sites that provide facebook et marketing pointers for interview preparation. Figure out the important sub-areas that you want to focus in, and use your course or online materials to brush up your fundamentals. Finally, practice as many questions as you can.

I am an Electronics and Communication Engineer by education. After completing engineering, I worked with Accenture and slowly worked my way towards the field of data analytics.

I have written this blog which will help beginners to start their careers in this field:-