TikTok Data Scientist Interview Experience — A Hiring Manager Round Built Around One Experimentation Case

TikTok·Data Scientist·Jul 2025
Technical ScreenHR Screenhard

Round 1: HR screen, pretty much a normal phone screen — confirmed my work experience and visa status.

Round 2: Hiring manager.

This round had no coding (not sure if that counts as weird...).

First 25 minutes: deep dive into my resume, lots of "why" questions about my project experience.

Last 25 minutes, the case was:

They want to launch an experiment testing a new version of a recommendation algorithm meant to increase users' "explorativeness." The challenge with this kind of experiment is that it can slightly lower core engagement metrics (like the like rate) in the short term. What would you do?

Follow-up: How would you define and measure "explorativeness" and "user long-term satisfaction"? Besides the core engagement metrics, what other long-term retention or ecosystem health metrics would you look at?

Follow-up: If the experiment period is limited and you can't fully observe the long-term impact, how would you handle and interpret the results, and what would your recommendation be on whether to roll it out fully?

Published

Curated and edited by PracHub

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Interview at a glance

Company
TikTok
Role
Data Scientist
Rounds
HR Screen → Technical Screen
Difficulty
hard
Interview date
Jul 2025
Questions from this interview
1 question

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