Data Science vs Software Engineering Interview | 3 Key Differences

the second video i ever made was on how to choose between software engineering and data science which is a dilemma i experienced personally when i got a software engineering internship offer from amazon and a data science internship offer from goldman sachs since i had interviewed for both roles in this video i wanted to expand on the three key differences between software engineering and data science interviews you want to stay until the very end of this video because i also provide my best tips on how to ace these two different types of interviews

number one is standardized versus variable process software engineering interviews are very standardized in fact the process is so standardized that it pretty much follows this formula after you pass the resume screen the first round is an online assessment second round is a technical screen with a software engineer at a company sometimes this is subbed with a behavioral realm it depends on the company and then the onsite is four to six different interviews there are small variations usually depending on if you're a fresh grad or an experienced hire or if you're amazon and you're a little bit cheap so you have a virtual on site instead but overall really uniform now on the other hand data science interviews vary drastically since data science is a much newer field there hasn't actually been as much time to standardize the interview process or even fully come up with the core skill sets of what makes a good data scientist this is why each company will ask you questions that they think a data scientist should know how to perform really well for their specific company they're usually at least two rounds of interviews sometimes more so first off there is a recruiter screen and after that for the first round some companies will give you a take-home assessment where they ask you questions about a data set and see what kinds of insights you can extract from it other companies may give you an online assessment similar to that of a software engineer and others might even give you a math assessment too then there's a behavior around as part of a phone interview where they might just ask you questions related to data for the onsite there's usually two to six different interviews the format and content varies a lot too now with all that ambiguity this is a perfect segue into the number two key difference between software engineering and data science interviews

diversity of skill set software engineering pretty much tests you on three skill sets which i argue are actually pretty related as well these are data structures algorithms and system design first round is an online assessment and it has few lead code easy to medium questions on data structures and algorithms second round usually has another one to two lead code easy to medium questions on data structures and algorithms except this time you'll be doing it live with a software engineer at the company then onsite also has legal questions that start off easy and could actually go into the hard territory as well it tests you on data structures algorithms and this is also where system design questions come into play now if you're preparing for software engineering interviews you've almost definitely heard of lead code but just in case you haven't it's a platform that has a huge collection of software engineering interview questions and pretty much has a monopoly over software engineering interview prep for data science the skill sets they ask you about are very diverse they may ask you about sql machine learning algorithms probability statistics data sense and even product sense and this isn't even an exhaustive list companies will usually ask you questions about three to five different skill sets and as you can see most of these are actually very different skills from each other before i get into my biggest tip on how to study most effectively for these interviews i just wanted to say that if you're getting value from this video please consider hitting the like button dropping a comment and even subscribing to the channel if you haven't already your engagement with me helps me gauge the direction of my future videos and also really motivates me to make more and better videos for you guys now time for my big tip number one for software engineering just cover the major types of lead code questions and i would say you're good to go now for data science i highly recommend carefully looking at the skills listed for each position and actually try to find interview questions for the role on glassdoor after you figure out what they're going to ask you specifically study these topics and these types of questions because it would be so hard and honestly just takes so much time if you try to study every single topic in depth i'll give you kind of an add-on tip as well the general rule of thumb is the master sequel first because that's the most commonly asked type of question if you haven't already check out my ultimate guide to data science internships where i explained a method to effectively tackle data science topics to study step by step this fully applies to full-time positions as well i'm not going to go into too much detail here because i go through it in a lot of detail already in that video the number three key difference between software engineering and data science

interviews is difficulty in actually getting the interview it is so much easier to get a software engineering interview than a data science interview now unfortunately this is because there's just a lot less data science jobs available it also takes more time for the company to do a data science interview because of the diversity of skill sets and unlike software engineering interviews you can't really just screen people as quickly with a standardized online assessment for software engineering my big tip is that you should try to get referrals and go through your school when you can but i wouldn't stress out so much about it because there's just so many software engineering positions out there and it's actually pretty easy to get an online assessment even if you just apply with your resume provided that your resume is good of course i did that for almost all of my applications for software engineering and the internships that i received were actually from places where i just applied directly with my resume no referrals you know no school applications nothing the strategy here is to cast your net wide and just apply a pie apply i personally applied to over 200 software engineering positions and got two offers in that it is a different story with data science though data science positions are much more rare and it's so much harder to get it into you here i would spend a good amount of time getting referrals contacting recruiters and definitely go through your school if you can treat each interview as a golden opportunity and do whatever you can to score that interview within reason well i hope this video was valuable for you and understanding the three key differences between software engineering and data science interviews and how to adjust your approach to most effectively ace these two different types of interviews i know many of you are applying to both at the same time as i had and it's hard but i know you can get through it with a solid strategy and ruthless execution thank you so much for watching and remember to always minimize effort and maximize outcome i'll see you guys in the next video