How to Prepare for Your Data Science Behavioural Interview

Author:Murphy | View: 25121 | Time: 2025-03-22 19:18:39

As a data scientist, you most likely don't enjoy behavioural interviews. Most of our job is coding and doing analysis, so you probably think, what's the point. However, working well in a team is an important skill, and employers know this.

That's why in this article, I want to breakdown my top tips for smashing your next behavioural!

Always Prepare

Fail to prepare, prepare to fail

This is an ancient saying, but it is also very true. My main tip is to always prepare, and this goes for anything in the working world. Prepare for your day, meeting, and especially your interview.

The time you should take will vary per person, but I spend at least 4 to 5 hours on behavioural interviews. This may sound like a lot, but it's always better to be over-prepared.

If you have extensive interview experience, you may need to prepare less. I often find that individuals know when they are ready, so this should happen naturally anyway.

I appreciate that this one may be obvious to many of you, and I am sure the majority of people do this anyway. I am adding it here purely for completeness and to avoid leaving anything on the table.

I recommend you use DataFord to prepare. It is a platform for levelling up your interviewing skills with interviews from top companies. They offer practice for behavioural, technical, and even mock interviews to ensure you are well-prepared. You can check them out below (affiliate link).

Dataford – Land your Dream Job in Data Analytics

2–3 Stories

Have you heard of the saying less is more? Well this is the attitude I try to take to most things.

For your behavioural interview, I suggest having 2–3 excellent stories about the projects you have worked on or any significant initiative you ran that could be non-technical.

These projects are likely to have so many elements like:

Meeting and presenting to stakeholders
Hurdles and obstacles that you overcame
Key metrics and results that were improved
The technical details around the algorithm
Coding and deploying to production
How you measured impact
Communication with team members and getting buy in

All these things are questions within themselves, so you can use the same story or project to answer multiple questions. You are not repeating yourself but explaining all the different facets of that one project.

Make sure you explain all these stories slowly. Your interviewer needs all the context on your previous work as they most likely have zero knowledge about it. Almost treat them like an idiot to make sure they understand what you are talking about.

Nothing is worse than the interviewer not being able to follow what you are saying, as they will definitely not offer you the job that way.

Finally, one last thing: always try to loop your answer back to them. When responding, try to find a way to link back to the company and role you are applying for.

If you are talking about a recommendation system project, explain how you think it's relevant to their recommendation engine and how your knowledge will help them. This shows you are prepared and understand how you can benefit the company.

Answers To Basic Questions

Even though it's impossible to know the exact questions you will be asked, it's good to have responses to some general questions. Many questions will be versions of the ones I list, so you can tailor them to those specific ones in the interview.

Anyway, these are the questions I suggest you have pre-defined answers to.

Tell me about yourself
Can you spot and solve problems on your own?
Could you walk me through your resume?
Why do you want to work for us?
What's your motivation for a job change?
Describe a time you led a project
Describe a time solved a conflict
Describe a time you overcame a challenge
Describe a time you used data to convince a stakeholder
What are your strengths and weaknesses?
How do you handle failure and grow from it?
Describe a time you failed

A more comprehensive list of questions is linked below if you want to expand your responses.

Top 32 Data Science Behavioral Interview Questions (Updated for 2024)

A common and helpful framework to answer these questions is the STAR method.

Situation: What was the scenario.
Task: What did you have to do.
Action: What did you do.
Result: What happened as a result.

I recommend using this as much as possible in your answers; it's the way to answer interview questions.

Have Questions

In addition to having answers to their basic questions, you should also have a prepared list of questions for the interviewer. It doesn't necessarily matter what the questions are; it's more about showing you came ready and prepared.

However, below are some I recommend that go down quite well.

How do you see the future of the Data Science team and company in 1, 5 and 10 years?
What are the biggest obstacles you are currently facing?
What's one thing you wish you could change right now?
What's the most critical thing you want to work on?
Imagine I joined tomorrow; what would be a great 6 months or year?
How does growth look like for a data scientist at this company?

These get them thinking that are not just your normal run-of-the-mill questions that they probably get every interview.

Also, when they answer your questions, don't just say "Thanks, " "That makes sense" or "ok." Try to follow up and start a conversation to show you are engaged and thinking about what they say. This is another opportunity to display your abilities to the interviewer.

Be Animated

This is one that is often overlooked, but it is probably 50% of the reason why you will do well in your interview.

Body language is everything, and you must show some confidence and charisma. If you are nervous, scared, or frightened, they will know that, and whether you like it or not, the interview will worsen.

My key points for being more confident are to use your hands, speak articulately and at a good pace, smile and try to throw in some humour here and there.

You want to appear friendly, personable, and approachable because who wouldn't want to work with someone like that?

Even if your words are not the best response possible, how you deliver makes a huge difference. The interviewer will see you as someone easy to work with.

The fundamental goal of the behavioural interview is to determine whether you will fit into the team and company and their ways of working. By far, the best way to show this is to let your personality shine through!

Summary & Further Thoughts

Behavioural interviews can be tricky, but hopefully, this article gave you some guidance to help increase your chances. The key points to remember are:

Always prepare
Have 2–3 stories
Answers to basic questions
Have a list of questions for the interviewer
Be animated

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