r/analytics • u/Nearby-Cockroach8655 • 19d 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/Peachy1234567 19d ago

When I was hiring I intentionally would give them only a very small slice of the data. This is because 1. As others noted I was more interested in seeing their thought process, 2. I wanted to limit how long they could reasonably spend on it. If I ever get to hire again I’ll try to move away from take homes though, they suck.