Recruitment Stories - Zubair's Experience at Kona Software Lab Limited

Muhammad Zubair Hasan is currently working at Kona Software Lab Limited as a Jr. Data Scientist. He completed his Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Engineering from Military Institute of Science & Technology. At the end of his undergraduate studies, Zubair participated in the IEEE VIP Cup 2020: Real-time vehicle detection and tracking at junction using a fisheye camera competition as a member of team Multi-layer Perceptron, achieving second place.

This article shares Zubair’s experience of landing a job at Kona Software Lab Limited, in the hopes that it can benefit someone who is currently preparing for a job search.

Zubair was recommended to apply for this opportunity by one of his friends, who saw the job post on LinkedIn. He applied for the role through LinkedIn by filling out a Google form. About a week later, he was informed that he had been selected for an interview, which was the sole assessment phase for the job hiring.

Phase 1: Interview

The interview lasted for about 40 minutes. During the interview, Zubair was asked several questions. Some of the questions worth mentioning are:

• Why is Zubair interested in Data Science and why not in Software Development?
• What are some of the recent trends in the field of Data Science?
• What are Zubair’s research interests and why?
• What are some of the best business products as a result of Data Science?
• Why will Zubair use Deep Learning instead of Machine Learning? What are their applications and use cases?
• Basic conceptual questions on Deep Learning and Machine Learning such as why use activation function? what is hyperparameter? how Deep Learning models learn? what is unsupervised learning? what is CNN? how to design models? how learning rate is optimized? and so on.

Zubair was also asked about his thesis, capstone project, research publication, and everything else mentioned in his resume.

Zubair did not prepare significantly for the interview and felt that he did not excel in the technical portion. However, his answers seemed satisfactory to the interviewers, and he received a job offer as a result.

Special thanks to Muhammad Zubair Hasan for taking out the time to share his recruitment experience with me. If you have any queries, feel free to contact him at mdzh1997@gmail.com