Learn about the culture, expectation, and interview process for the data scientist position at Google

Every Data scientist dreams to work in a big tech company and Google is one of the best among them. Google already has wide-ranging services and a huge customer base all of which generate terabytes of data every day. So essentially they need many data scientists to handle and interpret such large data.
Job Description of Data Scientist

Before applying though, you should definitely have a look at the job description and what kind of work is expected, this is mainly for you to understand if you will enjoy working there. The Google Data Science role is **** primarily an analytics role that is focused on metrics and experimentation. This is distinctly different from the machine learning and product analyst roles that also exist at Google that focus more on the engineering and product side respectively. With the team, the role changes a bit, however, it’s more on the analytical side in general.
Required Skills

Before you start prepping rigorously, first understand what they are looking for and if you fit into those broad categories. They usually prefer a candidate with two to three years of industrial experience in analysis or related fields. They do prefer new graduate Ph.D.’s for some of the advanced roles. Some of the important qualification (taken from google career website) are as follow -:
- Master’s degree in a quantitative discipline or equivalent practical experience.
- 2 years of experience in data analysis or related field.
- Experience with statistical software (e.g., R, Python, Julia, MATLAB, pandas) and database languages (e.g., SQL).
- Experience articulating business questions and using mathematical techniques to arrive at an answer using available data. Experience translating analysis results into business recommendations.
- Ability to select the right statistical tools given a data analysis problem.
Applying for the Job
For the purpose to apply for the job it’s good to take a referral from someone you know and is working in the company. They may be friends, relatives, friends of a friend, etc. The referral makes your application more recognizable to the company. You will have to apply on the careers webpage of Google and it will ask you for your resume, academic transcript, and a cover letter for the data scientist position.
Some tips that I found useful for resume:
- Include your Github, Linkedin, Kaggle, Medium (if you actively write) profile links in your resume
- Mention your publications as they are very important for this role
- Keep your points short and precise
- Focus on your achievements, instead of overcrowding the resume with everything you have ever done.
For writing a cover letter, please keep in mind that it should reflect how your past experience has motivated you for this role and how Google is the place that will help you achieve those goals in your future. Bonus points if you include a bit about what you can give back to Google and how you can benefit the company as a potential employee. Since the cover letter is personal, it’s better to write your own, without reading samples that could cloud your opinion. Definitely get it verified by your friends, relatives, and possibly the person who gave you a reference or someone with 2–4 years of experience on you.
Data Science Interview Process

After you submit your application on the careers page, if you clear their initial screening then a recruiter from Google will reach out to you. They usually tell you about the Google data science job and try to understand how you fit into the Google culture. After that, a technical screening is done where a data scientist or hiring manager asks you a few questions. If you get through this, then they call you for an onsite Interview (but post-Covid it usually happens remotely). Let’s discuss each stage in detail.
Technical Screening
This process comprises of an interview, where a data scientist or Hiring manager asks you questions about statistics, coding, probability and some quantitative aptitude questions. But it’s more inclined towards discussing your past work experience, projects, and your approach to solve the project. They try to analyze your problem-solving skills and figure out if you have enough experience and knowledge for this position
Onsite Interview
It usually is comprised of 5 one on one interviews, which are used to evaluate your skill in coding, problem-solving, statistics, machine learning, modeling, experimentation, ML design problems, behavioral questions, etc. All the interviews are taken for about an hour.
There a lot of articles available on the internet that have shared some of the questions asked in the interview. It is highly advisable to read through them to get a flavor of the question asked in the interview.
Hope this article helps you get a good picture of what is expected from a data scientist at Google and also what their interview process entails. To learn more about different Data science concepts and about other company’s interview process, follow us on medium.
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