One of the hardest parts of many data analyst interviews are the “analytic thinking” questions. I’ll define these as open ended questions meant to test how well you can think through a quantitative problem and come up with a reasonable guess of a solution. These can show up in a variety of ways ranging from “How many golf balls can fit in a school bus?” to “What kind of metrics would you use to measure the success of our sales department”. While it can be nearly impossible to practice the former except through brain teasers, the ladder can be made easier if you start to familiarize yourself with common metrics and KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). In this article we’ll talk about 4 sources that you can use to gain some exposure which should help with your analytical thinking when you get into the room.
#1 – The Coursera Course Business Metrics for Data-Driven Companies
While this is definitely more of an introductory resource this course is full of real examples that help you think through how to tie business concepts to analytic solutions. The business examples they go through are common enough that you won’t need extra context to understand but complex enough that the solutions are not obvious. It is a great starting point for anyone who has experience doing analytics as part of their coursework but has never done the work for a business.
#2 – KPI Over From Qlik
For a lot of people getting their first data analyst job a KPI is something they conceptually understand but have spend little time studying. Though it likely only takes about 10 minutes to read, this short overview is a great way to boost your knowledge for a small time commitment. It also provides example KPIs and how they are commonly visualized by business area. This could come in especially handy if you are asked to whiteboard as part of your interview. It is one thing to talk about a metric but another to visualize it in a way that is easily understandable by your user. Take a few minutes and read through this one.
#3 – 64 Business Metric Examples from nTask
Another case where you learn through examples this blog post covers 64 common business metrics by subject area. Unlike the Qlik example from #2 this blog post doesn’t have visual examples but does provide an explanation and calculation for each one. Some of these are more niche and may not come up often so you may consider waiting until you know the company and industry you’ll be interviewing for before you invest a lot of time learning about these. However assuming there is a match these should prove to be an invaluable starting point for you to better understand how they look at the world.
#4 – Project Euler
Want some brain teasers that combine both math and coding? If so Project Euler may be a good choice. Project Euler is a website that provides a library of mathematical problems for users to solve. The problems range in difficulty from easy to extremely difficult, and they can be solved using any programming language. While the site is primarily aimed at mathematicians and computer scientists, it can also be useful for aspiring data analysts who want to practice their coding skills. The problems on Project Euler are designed to be solved using algorithms, and many of the techniques used can be applied to data analysis. As a result, the site can be a valuable resource for those who want to improve their coding proficiency.