Data Science: Everything You Need to Know When Assessing Data Science Skills

Data Science

This page is about the skill Data Science, which is one of more than 40 technical skills you can assess on Alooba. The Data Science skill is about some core topics in data science. It involves being able to show which types of problems can be solved with which models, understanding the typical data science project lifecycle, and core topics like algorithms, distance functions, survival analysis, market basket analysis, association rules, feature engineering, model evaluation etc.

Check out the other skills here.

What types of things are included in the Data Science skill?

The Data Science skill assesses knowledge of topics like Activation Functions, Association Rules, Classification Metrics, Confidence Intervals, Confusion Matrix, Deployment, Dimensionality Reduction, Entropy, Feature Engineering, Forecasting, Model Monitoring, PCA, Recommendation Systems, Regression Models, RFM Models, Segmentation & Survival Analysis.

Which types of roles require good Data Science skills?

Data Science is a commonly assessed skill for roles such as Data Scientist, Data Science Lead & Data Science Manager.

Why should we test someone’s Data Science 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 Data Science well, you can validate that with Alooba Assess.

Can I test my current team’s Data Science skills too?

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

Which tests can I find the Data Science skill in?

Data Science can be assessed through the Concepts & Knowledge test & Free Response test. The Free Response Test includes different answer options like written responses, video answers and diagram answers.

Can I add my own Data Science questions?

Yes, you can add your own Data Science questions via the question bank.

How do I get access to Alooba to test Data Science skills?

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

How difficult is the Data Science 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 Data Science Skills

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Marketing analyst candidate at Asian travel giant

That was definitely my first time ever being interviewed for skill assessment with the Alooba platform. Great experience and the value bestowed through such means is utterly respected on my behalf! I believe such online assessments should become more and more ubiquitous.

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Senior strategy manager candidate at global travel giant

It is very interesting way to take a test. I have not experienced such a pleasant test like this.

Vinty

Social media analyst for Asian travel business

I like the way of getting into this new job i think its a very complete assessment i like it a lot! Thanks for the opportunity

Nicolas

Sales development rep for tech startup

Our Customers Say

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)

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)