1️⃣ Application & Shortlisting ✔️ What happens: You apply on LinkedIn / Naukri. Recruiter screens your resume for: SQL skills Data cleaning + reporting Excel, Power BI Past projects Communication ✔️ If shortlisted: Recruiter calls you and says: “Hi Amit, this is ___ from ___. I saw your profile and wanted to schedule an interview for the Data Analyst/SQL Developer role.” 2️⃣ HR Screening Call (10–15 minutes) This call only checks: Can you communicate properly? Are you stable? Are you genuine? Salary & notice period? ✔️ Typical questions: Tell me about yourself. Tell me about your experience at your previous company. What database technologies have you used? Why are you looking for a change? What is your current CTC, expected CTC? Notice period? Are you comfortable with office timing/location/WFH? If you clear, HR books Technical Round 1. 3️⃣ Technical Round 1 (45–60 minutes) This round is mostly SQL + basic data analytics + scenario-based questions. ✔️ They check: SQL Joins GROUP BY, HAVING Window Functions Query Optimization Stored Procedures Indexing Data Cleaning logic Excel → VLOOKUP, Pivot Power BI basics ✔️ Example Questions: Write a query to find second highest salary. Difference between WHERE and HAVING. Use window function to calculate running total. How to optimize a slow query? What is normalization? What are clustered & non-clustered indexes? If this is cleared → You move to Technical Round 2. 4️⃣ Technical Round 2 (Case Study Round) (45–60 minutes) This is more practical. ✔️ They give tasks like: Analyze a dataset Create SQL queries Explain how you’ll build a report Write an end-to-end data cleaning pipeline Debug SQL queries ✔️ They may ask: “You have 3 tables: orders, customers, payments…write a SQL to find top 5 customers by revenue.” “How will you calculate retention rate?” “Explain a complex project you did.” If cleared → Managerial Round. 5️⃣ Managerial / Hiring Manager Round (30–40 minutes) This round checks: How you work with teams Ownership Real project experience How you handle deadlines Communication & attitude Problem-solving approach ✔️ Typical questions: “Explain your role in your previous company.” “How do you deal with pressure?” “Tell me about a challenge you solved.” “If we assign you a difficult dataset, how will you approach it?” “What value can you add to our team?” “Tell me about a time you optimized a query in real project.”

My profile - 4 years of experience in various AWS tools, Python, Spark, SQL and data engineering works. Applied through Glassdoor and LinkedIn simultaneously. Subsequently, got a call from the recruiter and then first round of interview was scheduled. Got through it. Second round(with Senior Data Engineer/ Team Lead) - Got through it. Third round - with Manager. Then got a call from the recruiter that the position they were hiring for - someone else got hired The recruiter at the same time gave me a choice whether I want to go for Data Platform Engineer - II job as they found my profile and skills to be relevant to that too. Went for it and another managerial round happened in which within 15 minutes I was told that they wanted an expert guy. The role was -> Dev Ops + Ops in Data Engineering But if you look at the JD of Data Engineer-II and Data Platform Engineer-II it's almost the same. Finally, got the generic reply - proceeding with another candidate or so...End! And after that the recruiter also didn't pick the call. 4 rounds mean approx 4 hours of my precious time got completely wasted. Pathetic experience! Advice to Chegg: Get your hiring team and managers in sync. Also, try respecting time of candidates too. It's not a playground.