I. First was an HR call. They asked me to tell them about myself, about my related experience (Data/Strategy), sponsorship, and why this role. After it wrapped up they sent me a sponsorship intake form to make sure I'd actually be able to work here.
II. Then came the take-home challenge. The day after I filled out the form they sent it over — not hard, 7 or 8 questions, step by step. Two tables: find the top spending advertiser, and figure out which program was the most profitable. You could get through it with a simple unpivot plus join. Then you had to give a recommendation — what you thought of the strategy, how to improve it, and what other analysis could round it out.
III. Then the HM interview. This round was really chill, just pure chat about my background plus some behavioral questions, with a lot of focus on cross-functional collaboration. The HM was really nice, so I felt pretty good about it. But I failed this round. Looking back, my own read is that it was too relaxed, so we chatted for too long and I ended up with no time left to actually answer the questions, lol. The HM's questions were also pretty generic, and with time running out I didn't clarify which specific angle they wanted me to answer. By the time I applied it had already been over a month, so I'm guessing they'd already basically picked their candidate — before the HM round even happened, the job posting had already been taken down.
IV. Panel interview. The last round was a panel interview, about an hour and a half, pure behavioral, chatting with people from the team to make sure everyone liked you. I didn't pass this round either, but I heard from a friend who understood it (they'd worked on a similar team) that it's also pretty chill — it's really just about making sure your personality is a fit, so as long as you've got your BQ answers ready you're fine.
I'd searched the forum before for this but hadn't found a write-up from a non-DA/DS role, so figured I'd share mine.
Overall, Instacart is pretty friendly about sponsorship, though it's also pretty competitive. The package they offer isn't bad either.
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