Initial call with recruiter then a general catch-up with a member of the team. All of this went well as the people were generally nice.
Next came a take-home analysis task using BigQuery data, with a presentation creation. This task was far more time-consuming than the suggested time —it’s not a couple of hours task if you want to do good job. I was rejected after this stage.
The feedback I received was confusing and felt overly nitpicky. It seemed to reflect the preferences or personal interpretation of one reviewer rather than the objective evaluation criteria shared of the task. It also seemed the reviewer lacked domain experience for credit risk.
The impression I got was that the task’s stated requirements were less important than the reviewer’s own preferences.
It could also be that the decision was more about selecting someone else rather than any clear shortcomings of my submission.
Or perhaps the process does actually have a narrow set of "ideal" results, which feels counterproductive for an open-ended analysis task and the way analysis works.
Regardless I left the process feeling that the effort spent on the task wasn’t fairly evaluated and that the feedback wasn’t useful. If I were to redo the task, I wouldn’t change my approach based on their feedback, which certainly isn't a good sign.
I wouldn't bother applying again for future roles as as the recruitment process felt inconsistent at some stages and they have a lot of stages for data roles.