I applied online. The process took 3 months. I interviewed at Boston Consulting Group
Interview
It was a lengthy process, applied for a position in March and didn't hear back until May. From May things moved fairly quickly. I went through an HR Review, a hectic coding test , and numerous technical cases on Zoom. But extremely rewarding!
I applied online. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Boston Consulting Group (Boston, MA) in Mar 2022
Interview
- Hackerrank quiz
- Pair coding
- Virtual on-site with 3x 1-hour interviews (2 case studies and 1 partner interview)
tl;dr: Was nervous during my first case interview which lead the partner to be verbally abusive.
Interested? Read on:
Did well on the Pair coding going into my onsite. The first interview was with the hiring manager a day before the other 2 interviews. I was pretty nervous going into it, and the hiring manager could tell. He was super nice though, and we ended up having a good discussion. At that point, I was pretty sure I bombed it and would have my other interviews canceled. I've seen on this site that can happen. However, no email so I thought OK I may still have a chance.
Did well on the second case interview so I felt I had some momentum going into the Partner interview.
The partner came on the call and he was clearly very angry and aggressive. I took this as a good sign that I was being seriously evaluated for the position and that I had an opportunity to perform. Had the mood been light I would've guessed I wasn't being taken seriously. So I gave my best effort to describe my background and projects and make a case for why I should be hired.
The partner proceeded to rip my CV to shreds. He went item-by-item through my work and research and explained how each was irrelevant to what they do at BCG. He asked about a project I worked on, where I had only intermediate results before leaving to take another job, and concluded the entire project was a waste of resources. He then went on to insult me personally.
I imagine this dude does some important stuff and is pretty well connected, so I'm a little reticent to write this, but I felt it should be said. I still think it was a good opportunity and worth the risk for this high-paying job. I accept I messed up the interview. I'm just hoping people who read this will be aware, I guess, that this is a possibility and can be prepared mentally if things go south. GL.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Algorithms and data structures, case studies are systems questions related to ML (e.g. design an ML train-and-deployment cloud service, design a recommendation engine)
I applied online. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at Boston Consulting Group (Boston, MA) in Nov 2021
Interview
HR Call, HackerRank test (mostly pandas numpy and sklearn), First round case (Cassey business case and technical case) then final round (technical case x 3). Cases are a mix of business and data science (although much more on the data science honestly).
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
First round case:
Technical case with current Data Scientist. Problem was around creating a model to help a customer with marketing strategy. Great conversation and really smart interviewer.
Final round:
First case was about having a restaurant chain as a client. The client wants to figure out how to maximize spending from customers.
Second case: a bunch of questions on statistics, SQL, etc. Interviewer came off as aggressive and arrogant, would just shoot questions at you one after the other.
Third case: Interesting case on bank fraud and how to deal with unreliable data. Interviewer seemed completely uninterested in the interview, to the extent he was looking at his phone, found it very disrespectful and unprofessional.
HR is really supportive and helpful throughout the entire interview process. But, 2/4 (might not be a representative sample?) of the data scientists seemed very disrespectful and unprofessional.