🏙️ Chicago Interview Differences
Chicago DS interviews are NOT FAANG interviews. Key differences:
17% more modeling questions — they want to know you understand the algorithms, not just call .fit().
Domain knowledge matters. Discover wants credit risk intuition. AbbVie wants clinical trial awareness. McDonald's wants supply chain thinking. United wants demand forecasting context.
Take-home assignments are standard. United gives 48hrs (intentionally open-ended). Grubhub gives 72hrs. Allstate has a transportation company case study.
STAR behavioral is used rigidly. Allstate starts with 10 automated behavioral questions recorded by phone. AbbVie and Caterpillar use strict STAR rubrics.
Communication > algorithmic puzzles. Explaining technical work to non-technical stakeholders is tested explicitly.
Company Quick-Hits
| Company | Key Focus | Watch Out |
|---|---|---|
| Discover | SQL (Snowflake), credit risk, statistics | Learn QUALIFY clause |
| Allstate | ML math (imbalanced data, CV, logistic internals) | Automated phone behavioral first |
| United | Strategic thinking over technical depth | Very slow process (3+ months) |
| McDonald's | SQL + Python + cultural fit | 5-6 rounds, ~2 months |
| AbbVie | Logistic regression + clinical trial context | Must explain analytics to pharma stakeholders |
| CME Group | Financial derivatives domain knowledge | Brain teasers common |
| Morningstar | NLP, transformers, AI | Extremely slow (7+ months reported) |
Your edge: SWE background at Meta + D.Eng is rare in the Chicago market. Most candidates come from analytics or academia. Lean into your ability to build end-to-end systems.