I applied online. I interviewed at Zillow (Seattle, WA) in Jan 2017
Interview
Working at Zillow has always been a dream of mine and was really excited to see a Sr Data Scientist role that seemed like a really good fit. I submitted an application through Zillow's career portal. A recruiter replied after a couple of weeks and set up a initial phone call. He asked me a few question about the usual things recruiters ask at this stage (i.e. how much do you make, are you legally authorized to work in the US, why Zillow?...). Then he set up a technical phone screening with a Senior Data Scientist.
The screening went well. I've done several phone interviews over my career and I can tell with a large degree of confidence how well/poorly I perform. Did I completely nailed it? No. But was it a performance worthwhile an onsite follow up? Yes, at least for most tech companies I've interviewed with (Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Facebook,...).
Anyways, I never heard back from anyone at Zillow. Neither the recruiter, nor the guy scheduling the interviews (who, by the way, wrote that the recruiter would have been in contact with me within one week time).
I understand that we're all busy, but even though Zillow certainly has a large pool of applicants and can be picky about their selection, it it really that hard to have a canned email (thanks for your interest, bla bla, but we have decided to pursue other candidates that seem a better fit bla bla) to close out the loop?
Zillow seems like a great company that cares about their employees, maybe start showing you also care about people in general.
I applied through college or university. The process took 6 weeks. I interviewed at Zillow (Seattle, WA) in Jun 2016
Interview
Applied through UW jobs platform for students and alumni. It worked much better than applying on line. After first call, got a data science challenge, as other reports here have mentioned. Spent about 30 hours on it - it is rather extensive assignment. Enjoyed working on it. I am really grateful that people with no experience are given the chance. Next round was technical phone call with a coding challenge. Not too hard if you like coding. Next step after that was on site interview with 4 people from the team. Three of were technical with Data Scientist, Software Engineer and Principal Data Scientist, and the fourth one was a discussion of future projects with Senior Director, Data Science and Engineering. All great people, and the white board questions were straightforward. In a couple of days got another phone call from Jenafer at HR, who was very helpful. She called me before each round of the interviews to explain what the format would be and make me feel comfortable with the process. The last one was another on site, this time with the Chief Analytical Officer. White board again, and we talked about DS projects I had worked on in the past. Really a test on your communication and presentation skills on the fly.
The whole process from application to the last interview took about a month and a half.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Compute median absolute error and percent of estimates within 5%, 10% and 20% of the sales price.
I applied through an employee referral. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Zillow (Seattle, WA) in Apr 2015
Interview
one question package, manager call, onsite. HQ is very beautiful with harbor view. Get rejected after 4 days. Everything was pretty simple, no disclosure agreement. Analytics team people a re very nice. Good luck to others.