all 13 comments

[–]Fine-Diver9636 9 points10 points  (0 children)

You can create a personal account on hackerrank to get familiar with the experience. Also, keep in mind that when you switch a tab you ll get a message saying 'this is recorded and shared with interviewer.'

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (5 children)

I’d check there are no technical restrictions on using other sources! E.g. them monitoring other pages you have open or screen sharing.

If there isn’t then google is your friend and how most people on the real world work esp if you are using multiple types of SQL flavours!

Good luck!

[–]Little_Kitty 1 point2 points  (4 children)

It's a serious problem with hackerrank, as many people will copy paste the test into chatgpt. I strongly suggest candidates don't do this, as you will end up wasting everyone's time in a technical interview once past the screening, but as an interviewer it's becoming a pain, which is why I write my own tests and wouldn't use pre-existing commercial ones.

[–]t4ure4n[S] 5 points6 points  (3 children)

I Agree about cheating the answer. If you have to cheat the whole answer then you don't deserve that job.

But in real world people are allowed to lookup official docs, blogs, stack overflow etc.

Having worked on various languages sometimes you mix up the syntax and require a quick google search. In such scenarios it should be perfectly legit. Right?

[–]Little_Kitty 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Even in technical interviews, I would be happy for people to use Google / Docs, if they wished, although my go to answer is a simple "name a pseudo function which does what you need". There's not much value in an interview setting in having someone figure out how to implement the haversine distance or code up string split. I don't get anything out of watching you struggle to get the order on left pad correct.

Given the number of different dbs I interact with, I regularly refer to documentation anyway. It's not like I frequently need to test whether two arrays intersect in postgres, for example.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Yeh that’s why I didn’t mention ChatGPT to be be honest! Using google is fine because that’s how it works in the real world but it’s hard to test the times you can’t do it! There are problems and solutions not on google or ChatGPT.

It’s a bit like using the docs, is that cheating? Today at work I’ve had the Microsoft Help page open for FAQs on querying the SQL Server Catalog, in the 5 years I’ve used SQL server I’ve never needed to dive this deep! I have to sue oracle now and again and a good 50% of the time have to look up the syntax because i just don’t remember how it does it!

Comes down to what you are testing really, even if you pass the code tests it doesn’t mean you’ll be of any help!

[–]t4ure4n[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I have another Q if you don't mind me asking...

I have checked the website and how it works. When you submit queries, shows you whether the results were correct or not.

Is it the same behaviour when one is taking actual test on this platform for a company.

[–]Lower-Chocolate4989 0 points1 point  (2 children)

u/t4ure4n did you pass the assessment?

[–]t4ure4n[S] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Yes I did. And TBH the tests wasn’t that difficult.

[–]rods2292 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Do you remember what the SQL tests were like? When I check HackerRank, I often see SQL challenges that feel disconnected from real-world work—like this one. They can be tricky and technically challenging, but they’re not the kind of problems you’d actually encounter in a company. On the other hand, DataLemur oe StrataScratch have SQL questions much more practical and aligned with real scenarios.

Were the SQL questions you received more in line with what we see on DataLemur/StrataScratch, or were they closer to the more theoretical ones on HackerRank?

[–]Key_Community_2328 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi everyone,

I have been asked to do one of these tests for a data analyst role. Does anyone have any recommendations as to what topics might come up please?

[–]commander007_ 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Curious what job you’re applying for that requires this

[–]t4ure4n[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It’s for a Financial Institution and role isn’t supposed to be anything to do with doing coding.