How To Deal With the 5 Types of Interviewers on Data Science Interviews
By: Emma Ding
Tags: Data Science Job, Interviewer, Data Science Interview, Data Science

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Introduction

When you start going on data science interviews, you will likely encounter different styles of interviewers. Some are awesome! These interviewers will help and guide you throughout the interview. But, let’s face it, some are not going to be as great. There are the misleading ones. These interviewers are those who will give you positive feedback during the interview, which makes you feel great and confident, only to send you a rejection email the next day. Then there are the silent ones. They give you very little feedback during the interview, making it difficult to communicate with them. There are also the tough ones, who will “grill” you over every single question until you feel like a nervous wreck.

There is no getting around the fact that interviewers play a critical role in hiring decisions. It’s critical for you to learn their styles and develop strategies to work with different interviewers. It can be incredibly frustrating to put in so much effort preparing for an interview only to get an interviewer with whom you do not click. In this post, I will share with you 5 types of interviewers and how to deal with each of them. Equipped with this information, you can ensure that your preparation pays off. You can use these tips in your very next interview!

I have been on a dozen data science interviews myself, so I understand both the wide array of interviewing styles out there and how awkward it can be when you face an interviewing style you do not know how to deal with. I know I could have used some advice at the time, and I hope this blog will provide you with tips for impressing any interviewer.

Before you start reading, if you are a video person, feel free to check out this YouTube video for an abbreviated version of this post.

The “What Do You Think” Interviewer

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You may have read somewhere that during interviews “you’re entitled to ask the interviewer clarifying questions” and that “It’s not fair for you to discuss a product you don’t know”. Maybe you took this advice and asked the interviewer clarifying questions. Only the interviewer responded with “What do you think?” instead of answering your questions. Now instead of getting the clarification you wanted, you find yourself even more confused.

What is the “What Do You Think” Interviewer?

The “what do you think” type of interviewer is the interviewer who refuses to be helpful. Whatever questions you ask, even simply for clarification, they will direct the back at you. Interviews with this type often sound like this:

Interviewer: How would you plan to increase engagement on our website? You: Before I begin, I wonder how do we define “engagement”? Is it defined by active users or the time spent on the platform? Interviewer: Why don’t you tell me what you think it is?

This type of interviewer is difficult and frustrating because you never really get any feedback from them. This can be especially problematic during an interview where the questions tend to be open-ended, such as a metric interview (aka business case interview, product sense interview). In these cases getting feedback is very important because it’s hard to provide a good answer without narrowing it down to a certain direction. So how do you get the information you need when the interviewer is being difficult?

How Do You Deal with the “What Do You Think” Interviewer?

To deal with this type of interviewer, you need to find ways to kind of “force” the interviewers to give you some feedback. Here are two methods you can try.

Ask “Yes” or “No” Questions:

If you want feedback from a tightlipped interviewer, start by making that feedback as easy as possible. Ask questions with brief answers, such as “Does it make sense to you?”, or “Is there anything I could explain more?”. With simple questions like these, it is less likely for the interviewer to still reply with “what do you think?”.

For example, this tactic could be used in the above situation. You could respond: “I understand that engagement can be measured by different metrics. To help us maintain focus, I’ll use the proportion of active users among all users as the metric. Does it make sense?”

Give the Interviewer Options:

Another way to force feedback from a reluctant interviewer is to provide options. For example, you can say “Here are a few reasons that cause the problem: First.. second.. and third.. Which one would you like me to explore more?” Most of the time, the interviewer will then give you a direction on which to focus.

However, some interviewers may still say “What do you think?”. In this situation, you need to prioritize the options based on your reasons and assumptions and make sure you clearly communicate by saying things like “ I understand that” and “Correct me if I’m wrong”. In such cases, it’s helpful to confirm with the interviewer again once you are done explaining your approach.

The “This Is Not What I Expected” Interviewer

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The second type of interviewer can be called the “This is not what I expected” type. This type of interviewer usually gives you some positive feedback such as “OK, continue” through most of the interview. However, after half or the majority of time has passed, the interviewer suddenly says: “This is not what I expected” or “I was expecting something else’’. This creates a lot of frustration and anxiety because the interviewer switches unexpectedly from being fine with your approach to denying it.

There are many reasons this sudden turn can happen. One possible cause is that the interviewers lost focus earlier, and when they regain their focus, they only hear part of your answer causing them to begin questioning your approach. Another possible cause is that the interviewer simply misheard or misunderstood your earlier arguments. They may have previously thought you were on the right track, but now realize that your approach is not correct.

How To Deal With the “This Is Not What I Expected” Interviewer

First of all, do not panic when this happens! It does not mean that you are doomed to fail the interview. You can recover, but panicking will only hurt you.

Here are steps you can take to convince the interviewer that your answer is, in fact, great.

Ask for feedback and listen. Since the interviewer is the one who said that your answer is not what they expected, the most direct approach to recovery is simply asking about the expectations and which part you are missing. Listen to their concerns or doubts carefully, and see if you can address them. Mention other ideas. If you have other ideas in mind, but you didn’t get a chance to talk about them, you could now communicate those and ask for suggestions. You can say: “There could be other approaches such as A, B and C. Do any of those make more sense to you?” Let the interviewer then confirm the direction before going any further. Ask for clarification. If the interviewer does not agree with any of your ideas, you can take a step back by asking the interviewer for clarification of the problem statement. Say something like: “Ok. Let’s step back. My understanding of the problem is such and such. Am I missing anything?” Listen carefully for anything you may have misunderstood and adjust your answer.

How Do I Prevent the “This Is Not What I Expected” Statement?

Knowing how to deal with this situation when it happens is great, but, to be honest, this is not a pleasant experience, and most of us would rather just prevent it from happening in the first place.

To prevent the dreaded “this is not what I expected” response, do your best to keep the interviewer on track with your thoughts throughout the interview. The best strategy for this is to always state the big picture of your approach before going into detail. For instance, you can say things like “First, I’d make sure that I understand our goals and constraints; then, I’d explore..; and lastly, I’d prioritize .. and focus on …”. After you have finished diving into some details, confirm with the interviewer that your approach is correct and ask whether they would like you to dive deeper or move on to the next topic.

The “They Seem Nice” Interviewer

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The third type of interviewer is very different from the first two types. Instead of not giving you any feedback or telling you that your answer is not as expected, this interviewer gives you positive feedback. They appear agreeable and engaging during most of the interview. However, they have very high expectations of the candidate, and they do not hesitate to fail you if your answers don’t meet their standards.

Why Is the “They Seem Nice” Interviewer Bad?

An interview becomes tricky when the interviewer does not give any negative feedback explicitly during the interview. Even if they notice flaws or lack of depth in your answers, they may nod at you or say “That’s great!”, “That’s awesome!”.This makes you feel that you did well, so when you end up receiving a rejection notice for the interview you don’t know the actual reason. The result is confusion and no knowledge of how to improve.

How To Deal with the “They Seem Nice” Interviewer

To begin with, you should be alarmed if you notice that your interviewer is too agreeable or always giving positive feedback. Double-check with the interviewer about whether your answer is comprehensive, whether he/she wants you to consider more aspects to the problem, or dive deeper into any of the factors you mentioned earlier. For example, if you are asked to diagnose the issue when an important metric shifts to the negative direction, you want to confirm with the interviewer whether it’s enough to only provide potential causes to the issue or if you also need to provide suggestions to fix the issue. Ensure that the interviewer does not want anything further from you for each question.

The “Always Cutting You Off” Interviewer

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The aforementioned three types of interviewers require you to be proactive in the interview so that you can get some useful feedback. This type of interviewer is on the opposite side of the spectrum: the “always cutting you off” type.

What is the “Always Cutting You Off” Interviewer?

These interviewers are often experienced. They pay close attention to your answers and find every opportunity to question your answer. They can sense that you’re following a framework (or a structure) and intentionally destructure you to test whether you can remain organized and perform well under stress.

Understanding how this type of interviewer works is best seen through an example. Imagine you are asked a question to investigate a problem that the average ETAs of trips went up by 5 after you clarify the definition of the metric:

You: I would look into a few factors to diagnose the problem. The first one is to check if there’s any outlier that impacts the metric because average values are affected by outliers. The 2nd… Interviewer (interrupts): That makes sense, how do you define outlier? You: A simple way is to see if there is any value that’s much larger than the rest of the values. We could set a threshold such as 99.99% of … Interviewer (interrupts again): okay, could you come up with a few ways to deal with outliers?

Under the pressure of these constant disruptions and follow-up questions, it’s completely normal to become nervous and feel like you are being “grilled”.You may also be afraid that the interviewer is starting to drag you in a different direction instead of letting you answer the original question. But, in fact, if you have prepared, you should know the answers to these follow-up questions. You know the answers. You just need to change your strategy to answer them. If you can defend your answers and convince the interviewer, the interviewer will be more likely to give you a strong yes as the hiring decision.

How to Deal with the “Always Cutting You Off” Interviewer

Although this interviewer can be both frightening and frustrating, here is a strategy to help you keep your cool and deal with this situation:

Focus on the follow-up questions from the interviewer. When an interviewer interrupts you with another question the first thing to do is simply answer the new question. You can take a deep breath and try to clarify the follow-up question first. This will give you some time to think about a solution while the interviewer answers your clarifying questions. Ask for time to think. If the question is very clear, but you still don’t have an immediate answer, you can ask for time to think by saying something like “this is a good question, give me a few seconds to collect my thoughts”. It’s always better to provide a structured answer rather than throwing random ideas even if that means you need a moment to think. Return to the original question. After you finish answering the follow-up question, you should come back to your framework and continue answering the original question. Make notes to find your place. What if you don’t remember where you left off after answering all the follow-up questions? You can prevent this with some easy preparation. At the beginning of any kind of interview, always ask for a few seconds to jot down a rough idea with some keywords on a piece of paper. If you are asked to stop for follow-up questions, make a mark of where you are, so you can come back to it after finishing answering the follow-up questions.

An interviewer of this type is not all bad. They will give you a lot of signals and feedback, so you know how you are doing in the interview. These interviews feel more like a real discussion session with a colleague. Your ideas are constantly challenged, and you have to defend them.

The Ideal Interviewer

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The above 4 types of interviewers can make your interviews harder and more challenging. What does an ideal interviewer look like then?

The ideal interviewer gives you the right amount of information about the questions and tells you what the expectations are. When you ask for clarifications, they should tell you the high-level business goal. When you are asked metric related questions, they will tell you how the metric is defined, and they should tell you what a product does when you are asked to improve a product.

Ideal interviewers provide useful feedback to you. They pay close attention to your answers so that they can steer you in the right direction when needed, and they don’t let you waste time in the wrong direction. It’s common for a good interviewer to ask “What do you think?” to test your ability to lead the problem-solving process. However, a good interviewer also tells you whether your assumptions are correct, if your answers make sense, and whether you should dive into other factors. The ideal interviewer communicates clearly.

Other Factors That Go into the Decision Making

It would be great if all the interviewers were ideal interviewers. In reality, though, you will likely encounter different types of people, and some of them may make you incredibly nervous. Remember that it is possible to get rejected even if you have done your best in preparing for and communicating during the interview. It is discouraging when this happens, but don’t blame yourself because many factors go into a hiring decision. Some of those factors are out of your control.

You can even ace the interview and still not get hired due to other factors that affect the decision making. For example, there may be another candidate who has more relevant experience and fits the job better. Or maybe another candidate has a strong referral. Both of these things can cause the hiring manager to choose them over you. In rare cases, the hiring decision could have been made before the interview due to an improper headcount from reorganization or cut in the budget. There are a lot of things that happen beyond your reach which can impact the hiring decision, so don’t overanalyze your rejections or interviews.

As a candidate, focus on the things you can control: interview preparation and your performance during the interview. In most situations, the biggest deciding factor of hiring is your performance in the interview. Walk in prepared to deal with whatever type of interviewer you have, and feel more confident that your interviews will go well.

Final Thoughts

Now you’ve learned that interviewers have different styles and how to work with those styles in an interview. The overall key to a good interview is to interact with the interviewer. Make the interview a dialogue. You, as the candidate, will lead the problem-solving process and, at the same time, you want to pay attention to the other person’s feelings and thoughts. Using the tips in this post, you’ll get real feedback from your interviewers and know how your interview is going. Try these tips in your next interview and impress the interviewer with your performance!