Fractal Analytics founded in 2000 by Srikanth Velamakanni, Pranay Agrawal, Nirmal Palaparthi, Pradeep Suryanarayan and Ramakrishna Reddy is an analytics service provider headquartered in New Jersey. They operate in nine countries globally and have over 16 offices worldwide.
While the registered and corporate headquarters in India is in Mumbai, in January 2015, they opened another office in Bengaluru and acquired Imagna Analytics and Mobius Innovations the same year.
In 2016, Fractal Analytics appointed Pranay Agrawal as the CEO and also expanded its operations by creating two new subsidiaries Qure.ai and Cuddle.ai.
If you are a data scientist and are looking to crack an interview at Fractal Analytics, we have got the formula for you. To get a better understanding and to make your job a tad bit easier, AIM caught up with the company’s Vice President, Tejas Sanghavi.
The first thing to crack an interview is to pose technical excellence, execution excellence and ace communication.
But before we get to the technical side of it, let us understand the most general aspects every candidate must look at before applying for a job.
Research and gather resources:
Make sure you get a fair idea about what the company does and what its work culture is like. Browsing through their websites, blogs, social media pages is also a great way to gather information. Or simply, just Google the company. A well-informed candidate always has an edge over the others.
Speaking of work culture, Sanghavi says: “Fractal’s culture and people principles are built on trust, transparency and freedom. In this high trust and high performance culture, only people with a strong work ethic, can-do attitude, result orientation and a high degree of integrity & professionalism can succeed.”
By now, you are probably already asking what are the technical skills required to qualify for a job at Fractal Analytics.
“At the entry level, we look for communication skills, structured thought process and ability to work with team and clients. You must have a learning orientation, and develop expertise very quickly in at least two of these tools – R, Python, SQL and Tableau. You must be able to demonstrate your passion for analytics – some examples of exciting code/projects done/courses taken/participation in open competitions. Every Fractalite develops themselves along one of the 4 career tracks of Fractal’s Analytics Talent Grid,” says Sanghavi.
What are the technical skillsets required for the different profiles at Fractal Analytics?
- Analytics Consulting and Business Intelligence: R, Python, SQL, Tableau, Qlikview, Hadoop, Hive, modeling.
- Data scientist: Experts at machine learning, deep learning and artificial intelligence. They need to be able to explain the first principles behind these techniques and use these techniques in business situations.
- Big data engineering: Experts at implementing big data solutions in live projects – they need to be strong at Python / Java, Linux, Hive / SQL, MongoDB, Spark.
The interview process:
In most global companies, the hiring process is often long and tiring and the reason is simple – they want to bring on-board the best! Fractal has a very low acceptance rate of just 0.9% and candidates are made to go through five rounds of interviews before being selected.
- Aptitude test – English / Analytical Reasoning / Quantitative techniques
- Technical test – R / SQL / Python / Tableau
- Technical interview: Assess the person’s understanding of the subjects learnt, curricular and extra-curricular projects and internship work. Experienced candidates have to explain the technical framework of the projects that they have worked on.
- Problem-solving interview: Tests one’s ability to think logically from all aspects, structure the problem, give a comprehensive solution and explain the same to the interviewers. Experienced candidates should also have a good understanding about the industry that they work in – common challenges, analytical solutions and disruptions in the industry.
- Cultural fit interview: Irrespective of the level of hiring, the company believes that an interview is as much about the candidate selecting Fractal as much as Fractal selecting them.
“A candidate’s interview process, to the extent possible, is conducted on a single day (called a day plan). This is to maximise candidate experience, and increase the speed of decision making,” Sanghavi adds.
Explaining what it really takes to be a part of the system, Sanghavi also says that values, cultural fit, passion for analytics, learnability, and then for skills and experience remain the prime focus while finding the ideal candidate.
As a bonus, Sanghavi finally says: “While giving the interview
- Understand the question of the interviewers before answering
- Answer all questions clearly and concisely
- Ask questions to the interviewer that are relevant to you.”
We hope this article will help you land your next analytics job. Good luck! and let us know any more tips or share your experiences in the comment box below.
The post How To Crack Open An Interview At Fractal Analytics? appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.