r/analytics • u/Nearby-Cockroach8655 • 20d ago

Discussion WHY ARE DATA ANALYST INTERVIEWS LIKE THIS

I’m currently interviewing for data analyst roles (mostly entry level) and every take home task i get is the same. It’s a bunch of tables with masked data, and they all want actionable insights, except i feel there’s never enough information to actually find an actionable insight. you can rarely use domain knowledge as identifiable data is anonymised and they never provide enough historical data to see if differences really matter.

Do other people feel this way or have i gotten the wrong end of the stick, if so any advice would be appreciated.

EDIT: Thanks you for the advice in the comments, I think being curious, documenting my process for the analysis I can do and explaining what data I needed to delve deeper is the way to go.

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u/Yazim 20d ago edited 20d ago

I think those are the most interesting questions to bring back in your analysis. Just say that you wanted to do X, but the data wasn't sufficient for that, but here's what you did find or would dig into more once you had access to the full data.

And also, giving homework during an interview process is dumb, pointless, and poorly thought most of the time.

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u/chickenshrimp92 20d ago

This is what I did during the interview for my current job.

I kept metnioning that I found X,Y,Z interesting and if I had more time and resources I would love to see how that relates to A,B,C which could lead us to some real big insights.

It shows you understand the data they sent you and are already thinking months down the road