There were three stages to the application process: first submitting the CV, first round interview, second round interview. The first round interview was fine: engaged interviewers and fair questions about a project I presented. After that things started to go downhill: I first received a rejection e-mail, and was then told that this was a mistake and that I had an interview at a time with no option to change when it was. During the interview, I was repeatedly asked to make medical recommendations despite not being medically qualified, the job not being medical, and none of the panel being medically qualified. This was entirely inappropriate and unethical, and I have still not received any response about this after communication my concerns. When I asked about maternity leave policies, the senior member of staff was not able to answer on any details, deferred the question to the only woman on the panel, and then interrupted her. Upon receiving my rejection and asking for feedback, it was seemingly copied and pasted and primarily consisted of suggesting I do an unpaid internship for the organisation.

The 3-stage process was made very clear before I applied. Stage 1 was submission of a CV and covering letter. Next was an online presentation over Zoom to a 3-person panel incl. a few questions about your background and why you want to work there. The final leg was described as a more in-depth online interview about competencies together with a data science problem that you work through while treating the panel as subject area experts. I didn't make it to the final stage so I can't comment on that. I received an email inviting me to interview about a month after the closing date for applications. They notified me just over 2 weeks before the interview, allowing me plenty of time to prepare the 10min presentation that they requested (was not required to submit this prior to the interview date). The topic was either an algorithm that you believe is important to data science or scripts demonstrating good research software engineering practices. Introductions with the panel were brief and friendly before launching into the presentation. They were very engaged and asked interesting questions throughout the presentation. Initially, these were familiarising questions and clarified how well the models apply to the problem I'd chosen. Once we moved onto the code, questions were a mix of explaining how specific functions work, together with good software engineering practice questions e.g. how would you improve this section of the code (think testing, variable naming, documentation), how would you make this machine readable etc. At the beginning, the panel advised that I could take my time to think through answers so I didn't feel rushed. Due to the number of questions the presentation took maybe 30-40mins. After that they spent a short while asking me some general questions about my work history, why I wanted to work there and inviting questions from me. The entire interview ran to about an hour. I got a response within a few days. I requested some feedback and I was impressed with the quality of the pointers they provided over email. Overall, it was a positive experience. I'd happily apply for roles there again.