An Interview with Info Analytics

I sat in a chair facing three 20+ boys, who sat across the table from me. The one directly in front
of me had his laptop on, ready to cross-check the facts. The other two sat next to him, towards
his right, their eyes resting on the table. Their titles were Data Scientists, and their main duty
was to collect, clean and munge data; but mainly to clean the data.

So tell us something about yourself, the one with the laptop said. Weve seen your resume.
But wed like to hear it from you.

Of course, I said. I worked with Acharya Investments for the past few years before quitting a
month back. I worked as a Data Analyst, looking at internal as well as external, unstructured
data to find insights.

"Tell us about this Clustering project mentioned on your resume." The one in the middle goes.

Sure. This project was about clustering our customer base of 180k clients into segments, in an
effort to identify which ones to go after for up-sell and cross-sell opportunities. We looked at ~50
attributes, and binned them into 12 groups. These groups clearly identify the key strengths of
these clients on attributes such as digital engagement, cross sell momentum, sales etc.

Did you write the code for it? The one to the extreme right of the laptop guy asks.

No. I didnt write the code. But I familiarized myself with it. My understanding is more on the
strategy front. Like identifying those 50 attributes that matter. For example, sales is definitely one
of the attributes, but we also look at their sales momentum by projecting the future sales.
Another example can be about emails. Email open and click rates are important, but we also
look at an index to take into account the activity on social channels.

I couldve gone ahead, but something made me stop. Their body language. They sat hunched,
one immersed in the laptop, and other two nodding their heads. It was an empty nod, as if they
needed something else from me to excite them. I stopped.

The questioner moved back in his chair, making a slight, choked sound.

So you worked on NLP? he said, moving on to another project from my resume.

I did. It was for the unstructured social data to understand the market pulse. I collected data
from social sites, primarily LinkedIn and Twitter, and identified patterns by creating a data
dictionary. Id have loved to explain more, but only if they wanted me to. So I waited. Did you
do it in SAS? one of them said.

I did it in excel. The amount of data could easily be handled by excel. I was looking at past 3
months of data.

Of course, he almost whispered to himself. A pregnant pause. I looked across the table. One of
them caught my gaze, but instantly dropped it. He looked like a dog who wasnt excited in
anything unless I threw a bone at him.

Tell us about any other project on your resume, the guy with the laptop said. I can talk about
the Campaign Analytics. This was a sort of primary project for me. I worked closely with Digital
Communications team to strategize the campaigns in terms of content, audience, leads. The
kind of questions I was answering were

Cutting me short, the guy in the middle said, And where did you get the data?

The data is stored in SAS libraries, I had to write a few queries to get what I was looking for.

So did you write the code?

Just a few basic queries.

Meanwhile, the guy to the extreme left was scribbling something on a sheet of paper.

And then he shoved it towards me.

Can you solve this algebra equation?

I looked at the sheet. I read the equation.

I didnt know k from x. Okay, yeah maybe I know that x is an unknown value and k is a constant,
but I cant make sense of all the text that precedes that equation. I pushed the sheet back,
saying, I cannot solve it.

Him: Try.

Me: I cant.
Him: You havent even tried.

Me: I dont want to.

Him: Dont give up yet. At least try.

Me: I cant. Im not this person.

This statement, coming from my mouth, changed my life. I did not care about any math
equations. I did not care about writing codes. And I didnt care about impressing these kiddo
data scientists. I cared about human emotions. I'd rather talk about the irrational beings that
humans.