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Technical Tools and Competency Questions

Assess the candidates practical experience with business intelligence and operational tools, their depth of proficiency, and their ability to learn and apply new systems. Topics to cover include which business intelligence platforms they have used such as Power BI, Tableau, and Looker, the duration and level of hands on experience with each, specific projects where they built dashboards or reports, and the candidates role in data modeling and visualization. Also include familiarity with general operational tools such as spreadsheet software, analytics platforms, project management systems, human resources information systems, and other domain specific software. Candidates should be ready to explain tool selection, how they integrated data sources, any involvement in implementation or configuration, examples of key metrics and dashboards they built, and how they troubleshoot or improve existing reports. For junior level candidates, emphasize practical skills such as creating dashboards, designing reports, basic data modeling, cleaning and preparing data, and demonstrating learning agility for company specific systems. For mid and senior levels, assess deeper topics such as automating extract transform load processes, optimizing data models, writing structured query language queries or scripts for data transformation, governance and sharing practices, and mentoring others on tool usage.

MediumTechnical
0 practiced
Compare Tableau Extracts (Hyper) vs Live Connections. For a dashboard sourcing 500k pre-aggregated rows and requiring frequent intra-day refreshes, which connection strategy would you choose and why? Discuss trade-offs for concurrency, freshness, and operational cost.
HardSystem Design
0 practiced
Propose a migration strategy to move BI workloads to a modern cloud stack (for example: Snowflake + dbt + Looker). Cover data model migration, ETL refactor patterns, CI/CD for transformations, access controls, cost estimation, rollout phases, and change management for business users.
HardTechnical
0 practiced
A critical metric is computed differently in two dashboards causing confusion. Explain the cross-functional steps you would take to standardize the metric definition, reconcile historical discrepancies, obtain stakeholder sign-off, and implement the canonical definition across BI tools and reports.
MediumBehavioral
0 practiced
Describe a time you automated a repetitive report or dashboard refresh. Include which scripting or automation tools you used (PowerShell, Python, REST APIs, scheduled jobs), how you validated the automation, and the measurable business impact such as time saved or reduction in errors.
HardTechnical
0 practiced
Your BI team inherits a legacy Looker project with duplicated measures, scattered logic, and no tests. Propose a practical refactor plan including how to inventory metrics, prioritize refactors, introduce LookML tests, convert ephemeral logic to PDTs where appropriate, and communicate changes to stakeholders to avoid breakage.

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