Eric Mayefsky, head of data science at Quora, has assessed hundreds of job candidates in his half decade in management at various tech companies. But like any manager, he started on the other side of the interview: as an applicant.

What he’s learned from his experiences on both sides of the table can help other data science leaders navigate the chasm of assumptions between interviewee and interviewer, and make more effective hires. His beliefs on data science interviews are defined by five lessons.

Hiring a data scientist can be a tricky process. The actual definition of “Data Scientist” is vague, the day-to-day job of someone with “Data Scientist” in their job title varies dramatically between organizations, and people come to the field from a wide variety of backgrounds. Examining the past of a data scientist candidate is a science in itself, one worthy of a blog post of its own. Today we're going to stick to building an interview that examines the present.

Since its debut in 2013, Walker and Company has drawn attention for its unique mission: to make health and beauty simple for people of color. Their flagship product, the Bevel Shave System, is designed for those who usually suffer skin irritation or razor bumps from shaving. Bevel is available as a subscription: folks pay monthly and receive new product quarterly.

Intronis CEO Rick Faulk argues that there are three key benefits of total transparency at your company:

1. Employee trust and buy-in
2. A more informed workforce
3. Better company-wide accountability

So what does internal transparency actually look like?

With the emergence of data integration tools it's easier than ever to get your hands on consolidated data from third-party tools. Access to this data provides tons of opportunities to understand exactly how customers interact with your product and your teams.

Head over to Twitch on any given day and you'll find 250,000 broadcasters live streaming content to more than two million concurrent viewers. Launched in 2007 under the name Justin.tv, Twitch was intended to be a “stream anything” platform, but pivoted to video game streaming once it proved to be the most popular content on the site.