I applied online. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at InstaDeep (Paris) in Oct 2024
Interview
Felt like a waste of time to be honest.
First, I was asked to perform a 3h Hackerrank assesment, which was a custom Bioinformatics problem which had a terribly written description, so 1.5h went into just understanding what the problem was asking. I managed to make a solution that wasn't really efficient but passed all but one test case, and got an email the next day saying I passed to the next round.
The next round was a mixed HR and Technical 1h interview with the recruiter. I was asked a mix between general ML questions, pretty specific MLOps/Software Engineering questions and questions about a personal project. It was pretty intense, but the interviewer was nice enough.
Finally, some weeks later I just got a generic email saying they had refused my application. I guess on the one hand kudos to them for taking the time to interview everyone, but I feel giving a little more feedback to candidates after having them spend so much time an effort for just the inital steps of the application would be in place.
Interview questions [4]
Question 1
What are some methods to prevent overfitting in a Neural Network.
Thank you for providing detailed feedback regarding your interview experience with InstaDeep. We apologize for any frustration and inconvenience you experienced throughout the process. We deeply value your insights as they help us identify areas for improvement.
We regret that the Assessment description was not clear and that it consumed a significant amount of your time just to understand the problem. Your feedback has been noted, and we will work on providing clearer and more concise instructions for future candidates. Your feedback will be shared with our interview team to refine our approach.
We truly appreciate your interest in joining InstaDeep and your feedback. We wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors.