I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Freelancer (London, England) in Mar 2017
Interview
I applied for a data scientist position at London online. I was contacted for an initial phone screening with Joe Griston within one day. We discussed about my background and about the job requirements. I was asked also about my salary expectations. The budget for the position was bellow market average but Joe was trying to persuade me that the salary is very good. Anyway, I decided to proceed with the next steps since the job was interesting. The next was a test project. If I was successful we would proceed to an in person interview that would involve also some tests.
I completed the test project, and Joe informed me that it was very good and they would like to proceed with the next step. He asked my availability and I replied to him. I didn't have any reply so after one week I contacted him again. He said that they are definitely interested in arranging the next step and he just forgot to reply. He asked about my availability again. I replied again. And I never heard back from him... At the meanwhile I had 3 offers from other companies (all of them offered 10K-15K more than the salary discussed with Freelancer), so I didn't bother more with them.
My experience was obviously very negative. These people are not serious and they don't respect your time. I suppose that at the end they didn't have budget for this position or they decided to go with another candidate. But it is really annoying that they asked me to do a test project (which I completed successfully) and then they didn't even bother to explain me what happened. I would definitely not recommend to anyone to apply to this company.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Some questions about my background and a test project (some data analysis along with a report explaining your thought process)
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Freelancer (Sydney) in Aug 2015
Interview
It was quite nice - I was given a test checking my basic understanding of Linux, algorithms, trees, a high level overview on security and some SQL and Database design. Afterwards, 2 data scientists came and we talked through it (including a lot of chats about other things like python packaging and using R for data science).
After that finished, I had a chat to a product manager and got grilled on ways to use data and ideas to solve problems, estimating things - very open ended and common creativity questions.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
How could you use facebook data to help guide the companies decisions.