Apache Spark: Everything You Need to Know When Assessing Apache Spark Skills

Apache Spark

This page is about the skill Apache Spark, which is one of more than 40 technical skills you can assess on Alooba. The Apache Spark skill is mainly about the practical uses of Spark for data analytics and data science. It includes being able to demonstrate when and where Spark can be used and how it fits into the data science ecosystem. SparkSQL and PySpark questions are also included in this subject.

Check out the other skills here.

What types of things are included in the Apache Spark skill?

The Apache Spark skill assesses knowledge of topics like Catalyst Optimizer, Data Aggregation, Distributed Operations, PySpark, Reduction Operations, Spark Logger & Spark Streaming DStream.

Which types of roles require good Apache Spark skills?

Apache Spark is a commonly assessed skill for roles such as Data Scientist & Data Engineer.

Why should we test someone’s Apache Spark skills?

A critical part of running an ethical hiring process that’s fair and meritocratic is having objective measures of someone’s skills. Why does ethical hiring matter? Simple - it helps you hire the best person for the job.

Robert Half reported that the cost of a bad hire is on average 15-21% of the employee’s salary.

What was the most common reason for mis-hires? A lack of the right technical skills. This a true hiring own-goal, as it’s so easily preventable through a valid, thorough skills assessment.

So, if your role requires a candidate to know Apache Spark well, you can validate that with Alooba Assess.

Can I test my current team’s Apache Spark skills too?

Yes you sure can. You can assess their skills using Alooba Growth.

Which tests can I find the Apache Spark skill in?

Apache Spark can be assessed through the Concepts & Knowledge test.

Can I add my own Apache Spark questions?

Yes, you can add your own Apache Spark questions via the question bank.

How do I get access to Alooba to test Apache Spark skills?

Feel free to reach out and book a quick discovery call here.

How difficult is the Apache Spark skill?

Each question on Alooba is categorized by difficulty - Easy, Medium & Hard. You can set the difficulty level to whatever you like by picking and choosing the questions that you want to include.

What else can I assess with Alooba?

You can also assess someone’s intelligence, their personality type and critical soft skills, like communication.

Discover How To Get Started Assessing Apache Spark Skills

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Scott Crowe, Canva (Lead Recruiter - Data)

How can you accurately assess somebody's technical skills, like the same way across the board, right? We had devised a Tableau-based assessment. So it wasn't like a past/fail. It was kind of like, hey, what do they send us? Did they understand the data or the values that they're showing accurate? Where we'd say, hey, here's the credentials to access the data set. And it just wasn't really a scalable way to assess technical - just administering it, all of it was manual, but the whole process sucked!

Cole Brickley, Avicado (Director Data Science & Business Intelligence)

I wouldn't dream of hiring somebody in a technical role without doing that technical assessment because the number of times where I've had candidates either on paper on the CV, say, I'm a SQL expert or in an interview, saying, I'm brilliant at Excel, I'm brilliant at this. And you actually put them in front of a computer, say, do this task. And some people really struggle. So you have to have that technical assessment.

Mike Yates, The British Psychological Society (Head of Data & Analytics)

I was at WooliesX (Woolworths) and we used Alooba and it was a highly positive experience. We had a large number of candidates. At WooliesX, previously we were quite dependent on the designed test from the team leads. That was quite a manual process. We realised it would take too much time from us. The time saving is great. Even spending 15 minutes per candidate with a manual test would be huge - hours per week, but with Alooba we just see the numbers immediately.

Shen Liu, Logickube (Principal at Logickube)

We get a high flow of applicants, which leads to potentially longer lead times, causing delays in the pipelines which can lead to missing out on good candidates. Alooba supports both speed and quality. The speed to return to candidates gives us a competitive advantage. Alooba provides a higher level of confidence in the people coming through the pipeline with less time spent interviewing unqualified candidates.

Scott Crowe, Canva (Lead Recruiter - Data)

How can you accurately assess somebody's technical skills, like the same way across the board, right? We had devised a Tableau-based assessment. So it wasn't like a past/fail. It was kind of like, hey, what do they send us? Did they understand the data or the values that they're showing accurate? Where we'd say, hey, here's the credentials to access the data set. And it just wasn't really a scalable way to assess technical - just administering it, all of it was manual, but the whole process sucked!

Cole Brickley, Avicado (Director Data Science & Business Intelligence)

I wouldn't dream of hiring somebody in a technical role without doing that technical assessment because the number of times where I've had candidates either on paper on the CV, say, I'm a SQL expert or in an interview, saying, I'm brilliant at Excel, I'm brilliant at this. And you actually put them in front of a computer, say, do this task. And some people really struggle. So you have to have that technical assessment.

Mike Yates, The British Psychological Society (Head of Data & Analytics)

I was at WooliesX (Woolworths) and we used Alooba and it was a highly positive experience. We had a large number of candidates. At WooliesX, previously we were quite dependent on the designed test from the team leads. That was quite a manual process. We realised it would take too much time from us. The time saving is great. Even spending 15 minutes per candidate with a manual test would be huge - hours per week, but with Alooba we just see the numbers immediately.

Shen Liu, Logickube (Principal at Logickube)