I applied online. I interviewed at Salesforce (San Francisco, CA) in Jun 2017
Interview
Very Smooth and transparent interview experience. Better than FB, Google and LinkedIn, which I also interviewed with.
The interview team is very knowledgeable about data science and very nice to talk, very responsible to your question.
You can feel respect from them, during the interview process, which is very different from the FLAG companies' people I talked with, some of the FLAG people are very unprofessional and arrogant.
Interview take 3-4 weeks from end to end. I applied the position via its website. Got recruitor's phone call within 1 week after my online application. And then schedule a 45mins tech interview with a lead data scientist. The interview questions includes Bayesian probability question, multi variate regression, KPI/metrics design and A/B testing. The interviewer asked questions in very details.
After 1 week, got email from HR to schedule a 1 day onsite interview. The onsite interview was from 10am to 4:30pm, with 5 one hour interview and 1 business lunch.
The onsite interview includes 2 heavy data science interview, 1 product management/analytics session and 2 general software/data science sessions.
All tech interview questions are normal and decent questions related to data science area such as statistics, probability, machine learning, data cleaning and so on, no brain teaser questions.
Got email from recruitor to confirm a offer letter 1 week after onsite. The package is decent one, which is comparable with FLAG companies. I accepted the offer immediately, and withdraw my other offers and onsite interviews from Bay Area giant high tech companies.
Thank you for taking the time to share your success story and for the positive feedback on our interview experience! Welcome to the #SalesforceOhana! - Ana Recio, SVP of Global Recruiting
I applied through an employee referral. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Salesforce (San Francisco, CA) in Sep 2016
Interview
I applied through the employee referral.
First of all, my HR was great. She was very helpful in many ways, answering all my questions and guiding me through all the process.
My interviewing process was the following: first conversation/technical interview on the phone with a hiring manager -> preparing presentation on the projects I was working on before -> on-site.
For the first interview be ready to have the conversation that sometimes goes deep into details on the projects you were working on or your work experience. I did not have any coding/SQL/stats questions at this stage, mainly Machine Learning algorithms I am familiar with.
For the presentation, my advice would be to try to make it technical (to show your skills) and entertaining at the same time.
On-site was about 6 hours in total. I had multiple interviews with different team members and presentation on the projects I was working on (for the team + couple not team members). They also took me to a nice lunch and that was a good time for me to ask some questions in a less formal atmosphere.
All the interviews were hard, but super interesting.
Overall, I'd say it was the most hard-core Machine Learning I've had anywhere else (but the position is very ML and predictive modeling related). Be prepared to answer questions on the tools you have used for your projects, and those questions can be pretty deep. Most of the questions were case-based, when they give you a problem and ask how would you approach it. When you say what you would do, they ask follow-up questions on algorithms/techniques you suggested to use.
Also be ready to answer questions on coding (be aware of big-O notation), SQL and Statistics/Probabilities.
In general, if you interact with interviewer and ask questions, they'll point you to the right direction. If you have multiple ways to solve the problem, tell about them and ask if the interviewer wants you to take some specific direction. Data Scientists are curious people, they want to know the way you think.
I enjoyed all my interviews and conversations with everyone in Salesforce. That shows the overall company culture in a very good way! Salesforce people I have met are very friendly, collaborative and they really want to hire you, not to show you that you do not know anything, so just do your best.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Explain specific Machine Learning algo/technique for non-technical people.
Thanks very much for your detailed and thoughtful review of your interview experience with us. I'm sure this will be valuable for the Glassdoor community, and we appreciate hearing how we did for you. I'm so pleased to hear that you accepted our offer and are joining our team. Welcome to the #SalesforceOhana!
Ana Recio
SVP, Global Recruiting