Bloomreach interview experience Real time questions & tips from candidates to crack your interview

Data Scientist

Bloomreach
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5 rounds | 6 Coding problems

Interview preparation journey

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Preparation
Duration: 1 month
Topics: Recommender Systems, Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning and Deep Learning, Probability, Data Structures and Algorithms
Tip
Tip

Tip 1 : Practice hands on implementation of basic recommender systems. If not hands on at-least have theoretical understanding of the state of the art recommender algorithms. Think how certain NLP algorithms can be leveraged for solving recommendation problems.
Tip 2 : Practice top Data Structure and Algorithm questions
Tip 3 : When you read any new ML or DL algorithm try to think how it can be scaled and deployed in real time and what are the drawbacks if it can't be deployed in real time if any of it can be improved.

Application process
Where: Other
Eligibility: No specific criteria as such
Resume Tip
Resume tip

Tip 1 : Try to have brief explanation of the problems your have solved mentioning the skills required, for example graph embeddings, NLP etc.
Tip 2 : Its ok if your resume is more than a single page. If you try to squeeze in too many things in a single page it sometimes becomes difficult to comprehend.

Interview rounds

01
Round
Medium
Assignment
Duration2880
Interview date17 Jul 2021
Coding problem1

1. Assignment

Data provided: user interaction log [masked and anonymised] 

a) for a user recommend top 5 items 

b) for a product recommend top 5 similar products

Problem approach

Tip 1: one can try ALS based methods which probably can give embeddings for both in the same space.
Tip 2: the problem can be framed as graph, but given that the user / product attributes were not provided if you just use the products and users as nodes then its difficult to scale.
Tip 3: something like prod2vec can be leveraged.

02
Round
Medium
Video Call
Duration60 Minutes
Interview date21 Jul 2021
Coding problem2

This round was for discussion on the assignment with extended ML problem solving. 
This was a virtual interview organised in the afternoon.

1. System Design Question

Extend the similar product recommendation problem by leveraging the product attributes keeping in mind the cold start problem.

Problem approach

Tip 1: NLP based embedding can be a way of solving this problem. 
Tip 2: Hybrid recommendation approaches are a plus point as they help to solve the cold start problem and also supports good amount of user personalisation 

2. System Design Question

short span product recommendation based on user's current product views

Problem approach

Tip 1: re-adjust product embeddings using the recency of click. 
Tip 2: hybrid recommenders which supports attribute level embeddings are a plus point

03
Round
Medium
Video Call
Duration60 mins
Interview date22 Jul 2021
Coding problem1

This round focused on probability questions to understand general problem solving followed by questions on ML and DL basics with some ML problem solving. 
This round was also scheduled in the afternoon

1. System Design Question

create a new feature which enables image search

Problem approach

Tip 1: try to use labelled data as less as possible, self-supervised approaches can be leveraged.
Tip 2: try to explain how the embeddings can be used in realtime search (scalability)

04
Round
Medium
Video Call
Duration60 Minutes
Interview date27 Jul 2021
Coding problem1

Discussion on past projects and some ML problem solving. 
This interview was scheduled around 9pm.

1. System Design Question

upgrade product recommendation for apparel customers using product images

Problem approach

Tip 1: emphasise on how to understand the region of interest in the image (use less labelled data)
Tip 2: think about using the image embedding along with the existing product embedding. Do not just concentrate on the image embedding. Because lot of important information is present in the product attributes.

05
Round
Easy
Video Call
Duration60 Minutes
Interview date29 Jul 2021
Coding problem1

This was the hiring manager round. Which focused on ML basics and some questions on past projects.
This interview was scheduled in the afternoon.

1. ML Basics

What is Logistic Regression?

Here's your problem of the day

Solving this problem will increase your chance to get selected in this company

Skill covered: Programming

What is recursion?

Choose another skill to practice
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