How to Explain Data Analytics Project in Interview

While you are experienced or just a starter in Data Analytics field.

Most of the time, many time we think

• how to explain the projects we implemented
• how to effectively answer the projects in a shorter time?

I have been such situations, and it does really difficult to just highlight important things, here is the 4 step technique which I found is useful which will help you to answer the questions around project effectively. These steps I am focusing more on Data Analytics project, but this can be used for Data science projects or any other technological projects as well.

Step 1: Explain the Scenario

This is important step to start, what is the scenario or situation. This is basically a problem statement. This basically involves the type of project, the domain or industry, the challenges in this, and what is required. Remember in Data Analytics we focus more on Data and we have to help the business to take the data-driven decisions.

Context of the project is utmost important. This is the first step to start.

This is my try to explain one of the project.

"One of the retail industry having a online website for their products, wanted to check the reviews of their customers, What their customers speaking, which products are most sold, which products having bad reviews, what is the forecast of their current products for next 6 month and 1 year".

The above example tells about the domain, about the company and what's their need. This scenario generally sets the contexts for your next steps.

Step 2: Explain Your Activities

Now this is important once you set the context of the project, you should tell what are the next steps, In this you must be telling what are your activities or what was your ask. You need to be very specific about what was told and how you started.

Being clear and specific to the points keep interviewer listening and keep on track. This is where your confident will be tested.

Example - here is my try to explain my activities

"I have been asked to complete the following tasks - connecting to the data sources, understand the data,clean the data, prepare data model and prepare the dashboard which will show the results as expected."

Now the above example just shows high level activities you need to complete as a project. This is not highlighting any technical details, but that comes in next step.

Step 3: Explain the Action Taken to Solve the Problem

This is a critical part, and it should highlight critical technical things which you implemented in your project. How you have done all these things you should tell.

Some questions you can ask yourself for preparing this step:

• What tools you used to connect with data?
• What techniques or methods you used to clean your data?
• What processing or transformation you have done in this project.
• How data modelling is used ?
• How you prepared dashboards, what are critical KPIs implemented?

Have a clear end-to-end picture of your project. This is must, this helps to build your confidence.

Here is my try to explain my project:

"The Data was coming from a different sources in multiple tables in MySQL databases which I connected to the Microsoft Power BI, in power Query editor performed data cleaning tasks like removing null values, removing error, imputing some data. I have prepared some new calculated columns as well like revenue, Joined different database tables based on their cardinality making sure the data integrity. Once the data Model is ready, I have built a dashboard with complex formulas with DAX for critical KPIs as per the business need. I have been involved in unit testing of these dashboards and passing the dashboards to deployments."

Now this one example focuses on Microsoft Power BI tool(as one visualization tool), but you can consider other tools as well like Tableau, Python or R and can answer this way.

Step 4: Conclude with Results

Conclusion is important, short and crisp & effective.

This should highlights the key results of your final project, if you can give some specific figures like how much revenue saved, or time saved due to your project, the better it is.

Ending matters, and it should set a base for your next questions, Remember next questions will come out of your project only.

here is my try to end my project -

"The Dashboard we deployed has clearly showed which products are most sold, which are most reviewed and this will surely saved around a week's time of managers checking the things manually, and the predictions made for the next 6 months to 1 year will be giving right direction for business."

This four step formula will surely help you to get started and with practice you can be more confident, more clear in your answers. Understanding our project well, and putting your thoughts on paper does helps you become confident.

Let me know your thoughts on this, which technique are you using.

Happy Learning

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