I had a good impression of the team but was unimpressed by their data analytics knowledge (as indicated by the case) and the HR's professionalism. Case study (take home exercise) was a mess for three reasons. 1) Missing clear goal: the description of the exercise failed to clearly state what the actual goal is. There were at least two mentioned at different parts of the text: a) make the urgency messages have the most impact, or b) understand how prices change as the date check-in date approaches. 2) Biased data: the text asked candidates to use data to lead analysis on how to improve conversion or generate more bookings. But the data is unfit for purpose as they shared only the booked trip data (bottom of the funnel) not the data of customers who are about to book the trip (they may or may not complete the transaction). During the analysis, there is no opportunity to go around this survivorship bias. Any 'insights' generated from this data for the purpose to increase conversion would be rejected at more sophisticated data driven organisations. 3) Expecting micro-strategies: if the goal was to propose strategies with largest impact on bookings (unsure if that's the case, see point 1), then asking for distinct strategies for each cities feels unnecessary to me, especially as only one low-booked-volume city behaved differently from the rest. On my slides, tweaked for discussion for executives (short, to the point), I provided a recommendation where I have removed all visuals showing no new information. During interview, it felt like they wanted to see more graphs proving the same points. HR was rather unprofessional: I had to chase her twice for feedback, her feedback was "my analytical skills too shallow and way below the level expected to this role". It was mindblowing hearing this after I worked years in credit risk roles in the most data driven banks. This comment also suggest me that Agoda is unaware the dangers of biases in data & analysis and maybe they are not as great at working with data as they thought. The case study was a great way to see why Agoda is not fit for people who are careful and precise in their analysis. Quick and dirty approaches (as long as it has lot of graphs) may be more welcomed.

Applied through LinkedIn after which I got invited to complete a two part online assessment. Completed the first part in the evening, however, as the second part required a video recording, I decided to postpone that one till the following day when I'd be dressed in business attire. However, by the next morning, I had already received a rejection email instead. I'm perfectly happy with the rejection, but I do find it very unprofessional of the Agoda team to reject a candidate halfway through an assessment with no further explanation or communication. Definitely will not apply again to this company.