Gloss Test Interview 2: Fill & Download for Free

This is sort of a trick question.People tend to think of UX design processes like this:ProblemIdeationLo-fidelityHi-fidelityLaunchMaybe you do some user research or spend some time on user flow mapping. Very neat, packaged, and streamlined, right? Not quite. This is more like the UX process:Image credit Julie Zhuo via Junior Designers vs. Senior Designers.There's no blame on people for falling into the former way of thinking. After all, it's an easy way to gloss over the design process to a non-designer. However, these types of listicles are one of the worst ways to answer a question in an interview, not to mention canned and boring.Interviewers care less about what steps you go through than what strategies you use in your tool belt to solve problems as they arise. Interviewers are probing to understand:How does this person define problems?How does this person work with other people?How does this person deal with conflicts and disagreements?What does this person do when stuck?How does this person make tradeoffs and prioritize one goal over another?How often does this person engage their user?What is this person's strengths as a designer? Their weaknesses? Do they acknowledge that?What stage of the process does this designer spend most of their time on?How does this person evaluate their design decisions?How much ownership does this person have over their own work?When does this person's design process end? (hint: It never does, but you need to be able to make a product decision on when to ship an interation.)Those are the types of questions you should be answering in your response. Add some personality. Are you a data-driven designer? Maybe you obsess over prototyping and usability testing. Maybe you work on pen and paper 90% of the time because you believe it helps you create better designs. Or you make it a point to get feedback early and often.This is more of a question of philosophy than process. What you do is less important than why/how you do it. It is also an excellent chance to discuss what your passions are in design. Take them through a story, not a list. A designer than is deeply introspective of their own mind—and seeking opportunities of improvement—is a designer worth having.

tl;dr: Do a project you care about. Make it good and share it.There’s a lot of interest in becoming a data scientist, and for good reasons: high impact, high job satisfaction, high salaries, high demand. A quick search yields a plethora of possible resources that could help -- MOOCs, blogs, Quora answers to this exact question, books, Master’s programs, bootcamps, self-directed curricula, articles, forums and podcasts. Their quality is highly variable; some are excellent resources and programs, some are click-bait laundry lists. Since this is a relatively new role and there’s no universal agreement on what a data scientist does, it’s difficult for a beginner to know where to start, and it’s easy to get overwhelmed.Many of these resources follow a common pattern: 1) here are the skills you need and 2) here is where you learn each of these. Learn Python from this link, R from this one; take a machine learning class and “brush up” on your linear algebra. Download the iris data set and train a classifier (“learn by doing!”). Install Spark and Hadoop. Don’t forget about deep learning -- work your way through the TensorFlow tutorial (the one for ML beginners, so you can feel even worse about not understanding it). Buy that old orange Pattern Classification book to display on your desk after you gave up two chapters in.This makes sense; our educational institutions trained us to think that’s how you learn things. It might eventually work, too -- but it’s a unnecessarily inefficient process. Some programs have capstone projects (often using curated, clean data sets with a clear purpose, which sounds good but it’s not). Many recognize there’s no substitute for ‘learning on the job’ -- but how do you get that data science job in the first place?Instead, I recommend building up a public portfolio of simple, but interesting projects. You will learn everything you need in the process, perhaps even using all the resources above. However, you will be highly motivated to do so and will retain most of that knowledge, instead of passively glossing over complex formulas and forgetting everything in a month. If getting a job as a data scientist is a priority, this portfolio will open many doors, and if your topic, findings or product are interesting to a broader audience, you’ll have more incoming recruiting calls than you can handle.Here are the steps I recommend. They are optimized for maximizing your learning and chances to get a data job.1. Pick a topic you’re passionate or curious about.Cats, fitness, startups, politics, bees, education, human rights, heirloom tomatoes, labor markets. Research what datasets are available out there, or datasets you could create or obtain with minimal effort and expense. Perhaps you already work at a company that has unique data, or perhaps you can volunteer at a nonprofit that does. The goal is to answer interesting questions or build something cool in a week (it will take longer, but this will steer you towards something manageable).Did you find enough to start digging in? Are you excited about the questions you could ask and curious about the answers? Could you combine this data with other datasets to produce original insights that others have not explored yet? Census data, zip-code or state level demographic data, weather and climate are popular choices. Are you giddy about getting started? If your answer is ‘meh’ or this feels like a chore already, start over with a different topic.2. Write the tweet first.(A 21st century, probabilistic take on the scientific method, inspired by Amazon’s “write the press release first” practice and, more broadly, the Lean Startup philosophy)You’ll probably never actually tweet this, and you probably think tweets are a frivolous avenue to disseminate scientific findings. But it’s essential that you write 1-2 sentences about your (hypothetical) findings *before* you start. Be realistic (especially about being able to do this in a week) and optimistic (about actually having any findings, or them being interesting). Think of a likely scenario; it won’t be accurate (you can make things up at this point), but you’ll know if this is even worth pursuing.Here are a few examples, with a conversational hook thrown in:“I used LinkedIn data to find out what makes entrepreneurs different -- it turns out they’re older than you think, and they tend to major in physics but not in nursing or theology. I guess it’s hard to get VC funding to start your own religion.”“I used Jawbone data to see how weather affects activity levels -- it turns out people in NY are less sensitive to weather variations than Californians. Do you think New Yorkers are tougher or just work out indoors?”“I combined BBC obituary data with Wikipedia entries to see if 2016 was as bad as we thought for celebrities.”If your goal is to learn particular technologies or get a job, add them in.From Shelby Sturgis: “I built a web application to help teachers and administrators improve the quality of student education by providing analytics on school rank, progress on test scores over time, and performance in different subject areas. I used MySQL, Python, Javascript, Highcharts.js, and D3.js to store, analyze, and visualize California STAR testing data.”“I’ve used TensorFlow to automatically colorize and restore black and white photos. Made this giant collage for Grandma -- best Christmas ever!”Imagine yourself repeating this over and over at meetups and job interviews. Imagine this in USA Today or story or Wall Street Journal (without the exact technologies; a vague “algorithm” or “AI” will do). Are you boring yourself and having trouble explaining it, or do you feel proud and smart? If the answer is “meh”, repeat step 2 (and possibly 1) until you have 2-3 compelling ideas. Get feedback from others -- does this sound interesting? Would you interview somebody who built this for a data job?Remember, at this point you have not written any code or done any of the data work yet, beyond researching datasets and superficially understanding which technologies and tools are in demand and what they do, broadly speaking. It’s much easier to iterate at this stage. It sounds obvious, but people are eager to jump into a random tutorial or class to feel productive and soon sink months into a project that is going nowhere.3. Do the work.Explore the data. Clean it. Graph it. Repeat. Look at the top 10 most frequent values for each column. Study the outliers. Check the distributions. Group similar values if it’s too fragmented. Look for correlations and missing data. Try various clustering and classification algorithms. Debug. Learn why they worked or didn’t on your data. Build data pipelines on AWS if your data is big. Try various NLP libraries on your unstructured text data. Yes, you might learn Spark, numpy, pandas, nltk, matrix factorization and TensorFlow - not to check a box next to a laundry list, but because you *need* it to accomplish something you care about. Be a detective. Come up with new questions and unexpected directions. See if things make sense. Did you find a giant issue with how the data was collected? What if you bring in another data set? Ride the data wave. This should feel exciting and fun, with the occasional roadblock. Get help and feedback online, from Kaggle, from mentors if you have access to them, or from a buddy doing the same thing. If this does not feel like fun, go back to step 1. If the thought of that makes you hate life, reconsider being a data scientist: this is as fun as it gets, and you won’t be able to sustain the hard work and the 80% drudgery of a real data job if you don’t find this part energizing.)4. CommunicateWrite up your findings in simple language, with clean, compelling visualizations that are easy to grasp in seconds. You’ll learn several data viz tools in the process, which I highly recommend (it’s an underrated investment in your skills). Have a clean, interesting demo or video if you built a prototype. Technical details and code should be a link away. Send it around and get feedback. This being public will hold yourself to a higher standard and will result in good quality code, writing and visualizations.Now, do it all again. Congratulations, you’ve learned a lot about the latest technologies and you now have a portfolio of compelling projects. Send a link to the hiring manager on your dream data science team. When you get the job, send me a Sterling Truffle Bar.

My profile :10th : 85.3812th : 74.92Grad : 84.2Cat : 99.57GEM (20 months work ex as of writing this answer)IIM LucknowWat topic: Entrepreneurs can learn some things only from other entrepreneurs.Explained how there is no real substitute of experience. Gave example of Jeff Bezos, Bill gates and Dhirubhai Ambani to show that you don't need theoretical knowledge to succeed. Peer to peer learning is the best method to learn and that is something you can only learn from other entrepreneurs.(Overall ok attempt, my prep was almost non existent, but experience was not so bad)Document verification was going on in the background.PIThree peopleInterviewers I1, I2 and me.Both interviewers looked calm and talked in a kind manner.They called me in the room and I1 startedi1 : So you are a chemical engineer?Me : No, I am a petroleum Engineer with major in Downstream.i1 (looking in my data form) : Ok. And you work in Gujarat State Fertilizers and Chemicals. What do you do there?Me: Panel operators operate the panel, field operators along with workman shoulder field responsibilities. My job is to streamline the process and troubleshoot if any problem arises.I1: Thats OK. But what plant do you work in?Me : I work in Caprolactam-I plant. We have four sections in it: Anone, HX ....I2 : Ok so what do you do in your section.Me : As I said,I basically facilitate the entire process. So ....I1: So in the first year training you did all the field jobs.Me: No sir, I never did any field job in official capacity. I was directly incubated as a shift Incharge.I1 : So you were not appointed as a field engineer in your training. You never actually used the equipments with your own hands.Me (The way he said that made me want to defend myself) : I voluntarily tried learning how to handle all the equipments, but officially I was shift Incharge so I was not obligated to do so.I1: so you operate from the control room. ( He confused me with panel operator).Me: No sir, that would be panel operators. If there is any emergency like we have a furnace, if that pressurises then I have to go in the field to assess the situation. I am not constrained in the control room.I1: so You have a furnace, what is the annual cycle of its shutdown.Me (Blank) : Sir, I didn't get you.I1 : You must be taking furnace shutdown annually, right what is the annual cycle?Me : No sir, we generally take furnace shutdown every 21 days.I1: Every 21 days? Why so frequently?Me : We have to do solid handling in our furnace, so there are frequent problems of choking in furnace. If we don't conduct shutdown in a month .......I1: Ok I got the problem. Now tell me why don't you try to go in Middle East. You can easily earn 3 times what an average MBA graduate earns there.Me: Yes while that may be true, Money is not everything for me. And even if I want to go, I am not saying I do, but even if I want I have to work at least 5 years before trying for Middle East.( This was perhaps my biggest mistake in this interview)I1 : so you will go after 5 years, right?Me. : couldn't counter convincingly. Told them about managerial aspect in my job profile and how even in my present grade much of my work is managerial, so going up managerial aspect is only going to dominate technical aspects in my job. (They didn't look convinced.)I2: so you will get higher positions with MBA and can jump a few years.Me: yes, Something like 15 years, because I will get 2 grades above if I am an MBA.They were little surprised at 15 years. Asked me about my other calls.I1 : Ok now tell me why oil price is low nowadays.Me : Told them that overall demand is low due to weak state of economies around the world, and OPEC is not lowering the production.I2: Is That the only reason.Me : Yes, demand side slowdown is due to slowdown of economy.I2: Isn't it a kind of price war on some other country.Me (Suddenly realised they want to hear about Shale gas) : Told them how it is unviable below 60$, and about hydro fracturing.They seemed satisfied now. I wanted to tell more as geopolitics is my stronger suit, but I1 pulled the discussion to other direction.I1 : So which books do you read? ( I have mentioned reading books in my data form)Me : I mostly read fantasy books.I1: which ones?Me : Harry Potter, Wheel of Time, ASOIAF, Mistborn series.....I1 : so you read ASOIAF , which is game of thrones right? So quickly tell me what's your take on the fact that 6th book will be released after the release of season6 .Me : Well that is certainly not desirable, as I am more of a book fan rather than series fan. But it can't be helped. You can't force an author to write books, he will write it at his own pace.I1 : (Not convinced, glossing over my answer) You haven't mentioned Tolkein in your answer.Me : I have tried reading it, but didn't find it to my taste.I1 (apparently shocked) : so you don't like reading Shakespeare, that's interesting... You know that he is called Shakespeare of Fantasy books,right?Me : Yes I know that he is called father of fantasy, but I read for pleasure and with Tolkein's frequent usage of archaic language I find myself consulting the dictionary more than I would like to.I1 didn't look convinced, I2 was smiling in a benign way.I1 : I would like you to try Tolkien again and Malazan series. You can go now. (No toffee☹️)Me : Thank you sir.The interview was very calm and smooth, no grilling. If I could have been more assertive and confident , I would have made a dent.I would update this after my Kozhikode experience.Update: IIMK ExperienceI1 : So are you comfortable?Me : Yes.I1 : Nervous?Me : No.I1 : Sure?Me : Yes.I1 : So tell me something about yourself.Me : Told. (Refer my Bio)I1: That's it?Me : Yes.I1 : Why MBA?Me: Agian screwed this, don't know how as these are textbook questions?(Basically he asked me if you want a jump in positions why not doExecutive MBA after 5 years, the diplomatic asnswer is to keep otheroptions open as well as because I am ready for more positions nowfollowed by examples showing your readiness)I1 : Tell me two things that you don't like about your company?Me: Job security, we have full job security so the employees becomecomplacent and getting work done is difficult as the people in higherpositions have accountability but little authority.I1 : Any other thing?Me : No, otherwise my company is very good.I1 : You have mentioned that you play chess.,right. So do you follow it?Me: I play regularly, don't follow it much.I1 : How is the rating decided in chess?Me: Told him about fide first and then transitioned to Elo. (A big messof an answer, I didn't know the answer but instead of admitting I triedto bluff.)I1(Not convinced ): Tell me who is the Number one player currently?Me : Magnus Carlsen.I1: Which country is he from?Me : Norway.I1: what is Vishwanathan Anand's chess rating?Me : 2821.I1 asked again are you sure?Me: Yes, definitely 2800+ ( He is below 2800 now, but but his peak is 2817, I checked later).I1 : Who has the highest rating in chess if all time?Me : Magnus CarlsenI1 : Are you sure?Me : Positive.I1 : Isn't is Gary Kasparov?Me : No. ( Carlsen broke the record of Kasparov, His peak is 2885. But I am afraid that the interviewer might be mistaken)I1 : Which country has produced most chess champions?Me : Russia (Don't know why, probably due to availability heuristic as I know names of many Russian players.)I2 took over from here.I2 : First of all congratulations for great marks in CAT. You must be having call from all IIMs ( Oh how this burns every time).Me : No, actually I got calls only from Lucknow and Kozhikode.I2 : Why?Me: Poor academics.I2 continued to counter that in Ahmedabad, Acads are not much stressed upon.(Explained in detail about criteria of all IIMs)I2 finally understood.I2: In your graduation I see that you have 7.8 SGPA in 2nd seem and youhave consistently improved till 8.8 in last Sem. That is very good.Me: Well initially you know some students are in a phase when theyinteract with seniors and the seniors give juniors so called "Gyaan"that pointers are not important and are not actual indicators ofintellect. Well I was that student. I thought pointers are all passé .I1 and I2 (laughing): So later you realised that they are actually good indicators?Me: No that's still debatable. But when you have 200000 candidates, youcan't interview so many people, so they certainly acts as good filters. Imean essentially CAT is just a glorified IQ test serving as a filter,after all, a manager does not need to know that an equilateral trianglehas coinciding Centroid, Orthocentre, Circumcentre and Incentre.I1 : Why do you pause and think so much before answering any question. ( I have pathetic fluency in speaking English)Me : Sir, I believe that one should answer only after thinking well rather than answer on reflex and then later backtracking.I2: So you have good Quant score and good grades in Mathematicsthroughout. Your maths must be very good. ( 96 in Xth, 95 in XIIth, AAtwice and AB once in college ).Me : Yes, but it's all kind of rusty right now. (Believe me, rusty is being generous)I2 : So what subjects did you studied in Maths in Engineering?Me : (No recollection) Integration, limits, differentiation, Matrix,etcI2 : Tell me the basic requirement for multiplication of two matrices?Me : Dnt know.I2 : You studied Gandhian thoughts? What is one thing you like most in Gandhiji?Me: Perseverance . The non-violent movement was something first of itskind, no one had ever tried doing something like that. So despite it notbeing a time tested method, he persevered for some 40 odd years untilindependence.I2 By whom was Gandhiji inspired most from?Me : Don't know ( I suppose it's Gokhale, it didn't strike me at that time)I2 : What did you learn in Gandhian thoughts?Me: Honesty. How we should be honest in our daily practices and ethics.How ethics can help in business practices. (Honestly I was making thingsup.)I1 and I2 both conferred and asked me to leave.Wat-GD : Development in North east India? WHAT can be done about it?