I applied through an employee referral. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at IQVIA
Interview
Prior to the interviews, there was a timed logic/math test that had to be completed. After that screening test, there were in-phone interviews, followed by several rounds of in-person interviews, followed by a panel case interview.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Several interviews involved mini-case studies, where you had to solve a problem and present a solution and the thinking and rationale behind it. Some interviews were assessing your soft skills, based on prior experience. The final interview was a panel case interview/presentation.
I applied through a staffing agency. The process took 4 months. I interviewed at IQVIA (Basel) in Apr 2017
Interview
I was first contacted by a headhunter. Then I went for two phone interviews, one onsite (@Basel), a few more phone calls and another onsite (@London).
All the interviews were generic, mostly about my previous experience, the job requirements, and ideas for the future of the business. The last onsite interview was the exception - a technical interview, although it had not been introduced as such.
Imagine showing up to an interview for an Engagement Management position - which is basically a mix of Project Manager, Delivery Lead and Business Developer - and finding out on the spot that you are going to be tested on stats questions by two former postdocs in Machine Learning. Ta-daaaa!
To my surprise, a week after the last interview, the head hunter said that an offer was on its way. I pinged him in the following weeks asking when would he expect the offer to arrive, but no update. Eventually, three months later I told him to pull me out of the process - that is, if there was any process - as it all seemed to be too unprofessional. I tried to contact the hiring manager directly to ask for clarification, but he never replied to my email.
The head hunter in between makes it harder to understand whether there wsa mismanagement of the application from IQVIA, or whether the head hunter was trying to buy time while evaluating other candidates. Either way it was a very poor experience.
The cherry on the cake is that I never got any travel refunded, although they originally agreed to pay for it.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
- tell me about your experience
- how would you expand business at client X?
- several questions on a table with approx 10 covariates and their risk ratios / p-values.
- how do you split train/cross-validation datasets? what are the most common cross-validation techniques?
- what is the curse of dimensionality?
I interviewed at IQVIA (London, England) in Feb 2018
Interview
First round telephone, by a partner. They were very friendly and efficient. There were no delays planning the interview. The feedback after the interview was very quick and was supplied with out request. The only issue is that the interviewer should have read CV more carefully before selecting me and the recruiter should have done a stronger due diligence on the role