J'ai postulé via un recruteur. Le processus a pris 5 semaines. J'ai passé un entretien chez Blue Motor Finance (Sevenoaks, England) en août 2025
Entretien
The interview process consisted of three rounds: two online and one in person. The first was an initial screening, the second was technical with a mix of data science and credit risk questions, and the third was an in-person interview with the head of the division. Overall, the process was clear and well structured, though the final hiring decision seemed to prioritize a skill set not originally outlined in the role description.
Questions d'entretien [1]
Question 1
Technical interview included going through a Jupyter notebook and talking through my thoughts on the XGBoost model.
J'ai postulé via une agence de recrutement. Le processus a pris 3 semaines. J'ai passé un entretien chez Blue Motor Finance en juin 2025
Entretien
A 'strange' interview. I found Blue Motor Finance through a recruitment agency. Began by asking for my experience and other standard interview questions, which went well. Then the interviewer went on to explain the role, at which point I could tell it was more of an insight analyst role dressed up as a data science role. This was made more clear when the interviewer said that they "don't want to rely on models". At this point, I could tell the role wouldn't be a good fit. Small company with 3 DS "insight" people.
What is the point in advertising a role in DS if it's an insight analyst role? Also, the company's CRM modelling sounds a bit amateurish in comparison to other companies I have worked for. Perhaps why they don't trust models
Questions d'entretien [1]
Question 1
What experience have you had previous to this role?
J'ai postulé en ligne. Le processus a pris 4 semaines. J'ai passé un entretien chez Blue Motor Finance (Sevenoaks, England) en sept. 2022
Entretien
The first stage was a face-to-face technical interview. The interview was conducted online via teams video chat.
My experience of this interview was very negative. For example I found the interviewers to be very condescending and arrogant. When I was speaking one of them would often look away at the camera and glance off into the corner somewhere as if they were uninterested in what I had to say. The other person however was different and was a lot more kind and sympathetic and seemed to take an interest what what I had to say and even asked me some personal questions and as well as technical questions.
If successful the next stage would have been a 1 hour technical interview, where you would have been asked some trivial programming problems on some important software fundamentals and some questions.
Honestly the way software developers are interviewed nowadays is broken, the whole recruitment process is flawed because everything is not based on real life or what it would actually feel like to work for a company, it's based on how you respond to pressure in a given timeframe and how well and efficient you can solve a problem.
I think the whole recruitment process is engineered to find one particular type of candidate with a particular skillset and personality which is why software engineers and technical managers are very dull people with a narrow-minded view on how the real world works. As long as they get their high salary it doesn't matter.
Interviews need to be based on real life scenarios and how well you get on and work together with team members because it's about working together.
Questions d'entretien [1]
Question 1
Q1) Do you have an experience with databases?
Q2) What experience do you have working in a team?
Q3) How long did it take you to solve that problem?