Don't Use Leetcode for Data Science

As an aspiring Data Science professional, you have a lot of options to choose from when it comes to preparing yourself for your next big interview. Should you grind questions on Leetcode or HackerRank? Should you do peer-to-peer interviews on Pramp? We’ve looked at the competition for preparing you for your data science interview and here’s how they stack up:

At first glance, it looks like Leetcode has everything you need to prepare you for a career in data science: a neat interface, plenty of topics to choose from, and even a shiny introduction to machine learning course. But upon closer inspection, you’ll find that Leetcode lacks real depth.

Rather than preparing you for the challenges you’ll face in the field of data science, Leetcode introduces you to the basics and expects you to fill in the rest on your own. If you’re somebody who is self-taught, it’s unlikely that you need Leetcode to begin with; you’ll find the resources you need to master data science and machine learning on your own, whether they be Youtube tutorials, code documentation online, or other similar resources.

What Leetcode can’t do, and what you can’t do on your own, is prepare you for the specific questions you’ll face while interviewing for a data science position. It’s a great resource for people who are looking to stick their foot in the door for a generic software development position but unfortunately can’t rise to the occasion when it comes to data science specifically.

By comparison, Interview Query offers support for data science job-seekers at all levels of skill and experience. Our wide variety of interview questions from real interviews, sorted according to skill set (so you’re practicing the skills that you need to practice), question recency (so you’re preparing for tomorrow’s questions today), and difficulty (so that you can easily find your level of ability and work to improve from there), allow you to fully prepare for whatever interview challenges you’re going to be facing next.

HackerRank stands out from the pack because of its comprehensive treatment of the basic theoretical frameworks you need to secure a job in the tech industry. If you look at their databases course, you’ll find a few questions about normalization forms and similar concepts that you’ll need to master if you want to work as a database professional.

Unfortunately, like Leetcode for data science, HackerRank simply doesn’t get into very many real-world applications for the theory that they’re teaching you. Yes, the site can teach you the basics that you’ll need to eventually apply in a technical interview, but they aren’t offering you the opportunity to practice those skills in a practical way prior to crunch time.

It doesn’t help you too much to know what the normalization forms are if you can’t develop the understanding necessary to know when and where certain forms are more appropriate than others. Likewise, learning how to do something in SQL doesn’t necessarily prepare you to make the decision of when using a particular skill is appropriate.

At Interview Query, we use real Data Science interview questions from interviews at companies like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and more, to give you practical, on-the-ground experience in the sorts of problem-solving you’ll encounter during your actual technical interviews. We also cover a wide variety of SQL, Python, Machine Learning, and Product Sense questions that simply learning the basics defined by a site like HackerRank can’t prepare you for.

Pramp is a little bit different from the other sites on this list in the sense that it’s a website specifically about interviewing. When you join Pramp, you’re asked to schedule a time slot for a mock interview with another Pramp user (or, with the paid model, a trained Pramp coach), where you’ll go over a set of technical questions that the two of you can collaborate to solve. In essence, you and another Pramp user “interview” each other in order to practice for future interviews.

Aside from the fact that there’s no specific focus on data science, the problem that emerges with Pramp is that your interview experience is completely dependent on the person you get matched up with. If you happen to match with somebody more experienced than you, then your partner may feel short-changed by the interaction (or vice-versa). If neither of you really has a clue what to do with a given question, well, you’re basically out of luck. Of course, you always have the next mock interview to look forward to, where eventually you may find somebody who is perfectly compatible with you and your skillset, but there’s a good deal of luck involved in the process.

At Interview Query, not only do we give you guidance when it comes to answering the interview questions we source from real companies, but we also offer user-submitted comments on our questions, so you can always see what solutions, tips, or feedback other people have offered to a given question. Our upvote system makes sure that the most frequently liked comments rise to the top of the queue so that you can see what other people thought was important about a given interview question.

We also offer coaching services from professionals who have already made careers in the field of Data Science, so you can get the advice you need from people you can trust to know what they’re talking about when they’re talking about your future.

So there you have it: our competition. You have a lot of options as a professional pursuing a career in the field of data science, and you should use any combination of tools to make sure that you’re prepared for the challenges ahead. But there’s only one resource specifically dedicated to making sure you’re prepared for your next Data Science Interview, and that’s Interview Query. Sign up for your free account today!

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