How to solve Guesstimates for your next Analytics Interview – Part 1

Content Strategist- Ivy Pro School Sep 13, 2018 No Comments

Updated- 3rd July 2019

Want to be interview ready for your next Analytics Role? One of the most common questions you may be asked is to Guess a figure that may seem to be unthinkable or unpredictable to you if you are unaware of what Guesstimates are! In this post we describe one of the ways you could approach a Guesstimate question in your next Analytics interview.

When you enter a company of any field- market research, food industry, fashion industry, and many others- you need to be good at estimating your competitor’s strategy. Estimating your competitors’ business strategies is one of the important tasks of any business consultant though this is an undefined skill requirement you will never see in the Job Description before going for a Job interview!

Guesstimates are GUESSWORK + ESTIMATION

Guesstimates help you work efficiently with higher degree of precision and innovation to improve your company’s status in the market.

This is precisely the reason interviewers generally check your knowledge through guesstimates.

 

What does the Interviewer want to know?

 

• How structured is your approach?
• How comfortable are you with numbers?
• Are you able to make quick checks on the efficiency of different methods?
• Can you do back of the mind calculations and validate the magnitude of numbers?

 

Steps to solve Guesstimates Questions

 

 

An example : Q# How many cups of tea (all kinds) are consumed by residents of Delhi in a day?

 

After breaking down the problem and analysing each piece, we need to support our study with data in order to consolidate the result.

So our guesstimate says that around 2,80,00,000 cups of tea are consumed by Delhiwalas in a day!

 

Tips For your next Guesstimates

 

This was a pretty easy one, there are more interesting guesstimates which might interest you when you pull in economics or science into the picture. They are real life puzzles and predictions, so buckle up for a more interesting example the next time, check this space for tips to answer guesstimates during an interview.

1. Always have a framework to solve your guesstimate problem for your Analytics interview
2. Always have a few nos. at the tip of your fingers like the population of India, a few major cities in the country
3. It is a chance to show your creativity and ‘out of the box’ thinking to your interviewer

Read this one for more Tips & Tricks  : A focussed approach on solving the Guesstimate- How many cars would you find on Delhi roads?

 

FUN FACT: When a guesstimate question asks for the size of a market – It is called a MARKET-SIZING QUESTION

Books about guesstimating :

-Cracking the PM interview — Gayle Laakmann McDowell, Jackie Bavaro

–Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction — Philip E. Tetlock

 

At Ivy we introduce students to these concepts in Analytical Problem solving skills and Interview Preparation Skills. Ivy’s Students have been placed in more 100 Top notch Analytics Companies. We offer Big Data Analytics and Machine Learning courses in Bangalore, New Delhi, Pune, Kolkata and Mumbai. get in touch with us for information on our courses at info@ivyproschool.com or call/Whatsapp 9748441111.