How to hire a Data Analyst
What the role does, the job description, the interview questions, and the 52-minute screening pack that tells you who can do the job before you book a single interview.
The role
What a Data Analyst does
A Data Analyst sits in the Data & AI function. The sections below give you the job description, the interview questions and the screening pack for the role.
Screen before you interview
The Data Analyst screening pack
Cleaning data, querying it, explaining it and knowing the statistics behind it. Every applicant gets one link. You get one ranked report.
- 1
Walk us through an analysis that changed a business decision.
- 2
How do you check a dataset before you trust it?
- 3
Explain a statistical concept to a non-technical stakeholder in one minute.
- 4
How do you decide what goes on a dashboard and what does not?
- 5
Which tools do you reach for first, and why?
Interview questions
Data Analyst interview questions
For the candidates who pass the pack. Each comes with a sample answer on the full page.
Ask these after the screening pack, not instead of it. A candidate who has already scored on Data Wrangling, MySQL, Data Storytelling, Fundamentals of Statistics and Probability, Microsoft Excel has shown they can do the work, which frees the interview to do what a test cannot: find out how they think, how they explain themselves, and how they behave when something goes wrong.
- Ask every Data Analyst candidate the same questions in the same order. Comparable answers are the whole point; a different conversation with each person tells you who you liked, not who was strongest.
- Look for a specific example with a result, not a description of how the candidate would approach it in principle. Follow up once with “what happened next?” and stop talking.
- Score each answer before moving to the next question, and write down what was said rather than the impression it left.
- At volume, record the first 4 of these instead of calling. Candidates answer on their own time, the answers are transcribed and scored, and you keep live interviews for the shortlist.
The pack takes a candidate about 52 minutes, so a Data Analyst applicant arrives at this interview already measured on the parts you can measure without a meeting.
- 01
What drew you to a career in data analysis?
- 02
Walk me through your background and the kinds of data you have worked with.
- 03
What kind of team and analytics maturity are you looking to join?
- 04
How do you keep your analytical skills current?
- 05
How comfortable are you with SQL, and what is the most complex query you have written?
- 06
How do you approach cleaning and validating a new dataset?
- 07
What makes a dashboard genuinely useful rather than just busy?
- 08
How do you choose the right chart for a given message?
Frequently asked questions
Send every applicant one link that carries 5 skills tests (Data Wrangling, MySQL, Data Storytelling, Fundamentals of Statistics and Probability, Microsoft Excel), a personality inventory and 5 one-way video questions. springhire scores everything automatically and ranks the candidates, so you interview the top few. The free plan covers 10 candidates a month.
About 52 minutes for the tests, plus 10 to 15 minutes for the video questions. Candidates complete it on their own time, on any device.
A short brief, key responsibilities, must-have and nice-to-have skills and the requirements. The JD generator writes one for this role in a minute.
Questions that ask for a specific past example and a walkthrough of how the candidate thinks. This page lists 8 with sample answers, and the full bank has more.
Yes. The free plan includes every screening tool with 10 candidate credits a month and no card. Paid plans start at $39 a month.
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