Before i proceed:
P.S: ANYONE READING THIS, PLEASE CLARIFY WITH THE RECRUITER IF YOU NEED TO SPEAK IN CHINESE EVEN IF THE JD DOESN'T REQUIRE YOU TOO
First red flag, no initial HR call:
The recruiter cannot speak English at all and decided to reach out to me via email. I was a bit confused that there wasnt a need for a recruiter call to align on some administrative matters, but she said my resume was a good fit and scheduled the interview for me anyway
First interview:
It was ok, the interviewer was not a native English speaker but she can hold a conversation in English and i presume I would be working under her. She was pleasant to speak with and the questions were pretty generic for a data scientist position. I passed this round
Second interview:
10 seconds of her speaking in Chinese, 10 seconds of me trying to tell her I cannot speak chinese. Then she tried to reach out to the recruiter for some clarification for an extra 3 minutes of awkward silence. Then she said she will speak to the recruiter to sort this out. Interview done in 5 minutes, obviously not chosen just because I couldn't speak Chinese
A former colleague referred me to the Data Scientist position at TikTok, which kicked off the interview process. The technical screen included a question about designing an A/B test for a ranking model, followed by an SQL challenge related to user sessions. The funny part was that the SQL problem was a twist on one I had been grinding through on PracHub just a few days prior. After some behavioral interviews, I received an offer, but ultimately decided to decline as it didn't align with my goals.
Interview questions [2]
Question 1
Walk me through how you'd design an A/B test for a new ranking model on the For You feed, and how you'd pick guardrail metrics.
Given a sessions table (user_id, session_start, session_end, country), write SQL to find the users whose average session length grew the most week-over-week.
I applied online. I interviewed at TikTok (London, England)
Interview
one medium level sql test and an open question
Since i'm not familiar with business context(though i actually spent time preparing AB test and causal inference), i didn't get what i should answer.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
if tiktok shop is going to launch in Netherland, how to evaluate it before AB test