you're prepping for a job interview that involves tableau what can you expect to be asked during that interview most lists of interview questions about tableau are really extensive a hundred questions or more and they talk more about the functionality of tableau than they do about the actual application and using it in a job what you're going to find in a job interview though is people aren't typically gonna grill you about what the difference is from one version to another are they're going to ask do you really know how to use the tool and how you
would use different functionality within the tool so we're gonna look at a few of the most common tableau interview questions and answers in today's video instead of giving you a hundred different questions that you might get in a tableau interview we're going to look at eat realistic tableau interview questions and answers to help you prepare for that next job interview hi I'm Jen I help people build analytic skills and careers with new videos on this channel every week check out the description of the video for all sorts of resources related to analytics most tableau interview
questions are going to be conceptual and ask about your past experience with it as I mentioned you're generally not going to be quizzed on what change from version 8 to version 9 of tableau is it helpful to know probably but it's generally not gonna come up within an interview unless you're maybe interviewing on the IT side for implementation or WIC working on upgrading systems let's look at a few tableau interview questions and answers that specifically deal with tableau technical knowledge then we'll look at some other questions that you likely will be asked in your tableau
interview our first question is what type of data have you worked with in tableau from an interviewers perspective this is a great question to ask because I'm really asking you two things at once first which types of data can tableau support and second how familiar are you with these and have you used a variety of data or maybe you've just used numerical data haven't really use tags don't know how to use geographical data and in that case I might be a little bit concerned about how much you really know tableau versus how much you've just
done a really surface level look at the application and are biessing your way through the interview because this question is a knowledge base and an experience base question frame your answer in terms of incorporating multiple types of data incorporate at least a few different types of data that you know tableau supports you have options here you can talk about date or date and time data numbers text strings geographical values or boolean values don't feel like you have to bring up every single type but if you've used a variety of data sources and data types incorporate
those within your answer here it's great if you can incorporate something like Geographic data or boolean values that might not come up quite as readily as someone talking about date or numerical data within the information that they're working with it helps show that you really do know what's included in tableau and have an awareness of the variety that's offered our second tableau interview question is what types of data connections can you make with your data sets tableau can be set up with live connections or it can work with extracts of data you can talk about
both in your interview answer and when you might handle each one so again don't just list out what the options are don't just say oh I can make live connections or extracts talk a little bit about how you've used each one and why you chose the one that you did connecting large sets of data leverages tableaus computational power and its ability to store information it's great when you want to have regular updates for reports that might be going out to different people within the organization or report dashboards that people have constant access to on the
other hand an extract is great when you just want a snapshot in time the benefits of an extract or you can use the data even when you don't have a connection and you can build up visualizations without being connected to the database our third question also looks a little bit at your functional knowledge how would you display the first five records in the five records within a single view these are the types of questions that really speak to are you familiar with actually using the application what have you done with it the answer to this
question is you would need to create two sets one showing the top five view and one showing the bottom five view and then you would need to join them together to make one complete set here's another good one when would you use joins versus blending in tableau again we get into really being familiar with how you use this an application and anytime that you're asked when would you do whatever the case may be is a great time to talk about when you actually did it so get away from the theoretical if you haven't done it
theoretical is fine but if you have used it then talk more about that you'll sometimes find that you have to use data that's not compiled nicely from the start this question really gets into some of the data preparation and connection information that goes on behind the scenes before you really get to the point of creating visualizations and dashboards or stories with the content that you're using here's what tableau recommends in terms of joining versus blending when you're considering blending versus joining data think about where the data is coming from also look at the number of
connections and the number of Records you have if your workbook uses data from more than one database you need to either blend the data or add another connection to the existing source and create a cross database join if the workbook uses multiple tables from the same database joining the tables can improve performance and filtering control if data lives in a single source it's usually better to join it this tends to lead to better performance overall even with multiple data sources it's usually better to use cross database joins than blending again for performance reasons have you
used tableau stories this question is really three and one it is somewhat specific to tableau because it's asking about a specific functionality but beyond that it's really asking you about how you incorporate these dashboards to tell a broader story about what's going on it's also asking do you know that stories are diff than dashboards and have you actually worked with them so a good answer is to talk about how you've actually used stories and incorporated dashboards within them in the past don't just say yes I know what tableau stories are in general when you're interviewing
yes or no questions rarely should just be yes or no questions they should be yes or no and then some explanation how much experience do you have with tableau here if you have a lot of experience it's great to mention the number of months or years that you've been working with it a better answer though is to talk about some of the projects you've done with it ways that you've incorporated it how often you work with it or some of the more complex functionality that you use here you really want to just demonstrate that you
do have knowledge of the tool that you can really take the information that you have and apply it within the tool to make it useful in a business now we're going to get into some more general interview questions these are questions that don't test your specific knowledge of tableau but definitely test your knowledge of data visualization and best practices for communicating information these are really likely questions to come up in your next tableau interview what types of data do you normally include when you create a dashboard this question focuses not just on how do you
create a dashboard within tableau but really about what do you find valuable this question is more general to data visualization than it is to tableau but when someone's hiring you and they want you to work with tableau they're usually not hiring you just because you know the tool they want to hire someone that can create meaning from the data that understands why they're doing the analysis the way they are and why they're creating the visualizations that they are here's a great time to talk about the types of visualizations you like to use and the context
for when you're including them so if you've primarily worked with tableau in a finance setting before you might talk about using bar charts column charts box and whisker plots waterfall charts things that are more typical of financial reporting you'll also likely include some amount of text on your dashboard as well too provide some explanation or context for what you're doing focus on that context as you're explaining your answer what works in a financial setting is very different than what works in some other settings that may be more visual if you're working for a company or
applying for a job where you're going to be doing something that's very geographically based or analysis is very Geographic you probably wouldn't be doing the same visualizations using the same inputs and charts and graphs and tableau as what you would use for a financial network our second general data visualization question is how would you structure a dashboard in tableau again this isn't about specifically how do you create the dashboard in tableau and the exact steps to do that it's more about how do you create a good view of a dashboard so a general rule of
thumb that I like to use here is to create dashboards the way that we typically read so in English a lot of other languages we read left to right top to bottom what this means in terms of dashboard creation is the most important information that key things that I want people to take away are in the top left of the dashboard this also includes most filters that would occur on the dashboard so if you're giving people the option to make selections a lot of times it's going to be best to put it in the upper
left this isn't always the case if you know these changes aren't going to be made often and there's one view that is going to be used the majority of the time maybe you don't put them in the top left but in general the most important most prominent goes in the top left and then you build around it from there with the bottom right being context or reference information things that are the least important thing for people to take away from your dashboard design this applies whether you're building a dashboard in tableau in power bi in
Excel or if you were hand drawing a dashboard you would want to have the most prominent information to the place that our eyes naturally gravitate you can also talk about the number of different pieces that you like to include in a dashboard most of the time five to six pieces is plenty to include if you kept beyond that by much then you're really moving into more of a functional working tool than you are a general dashboard to give updates with there are times where more is what you need but a lot of times you want
to keep it consolidated enough so that you're sending the message that needs to be sent you're giving enough context but you're not overwhelming people with information part of your job and building the dashboard is to help analyze the data to make it ready for other people so the more that you can curate that in a way that makes sense and really communicates what needs to be communicated the more easily people are going to connect with the messages that they should when they actually take a look at the dashboard those are my top two blow interview
questions and answers if you're prepping for an analytics interview and want more personalized help check out the link in the description for one-on-one coaching with me I hope people prepare to ace their interviews and get great job offers all the time I'll help you get ready for your decks interview to market yourself in the best way possible thanks so much for watching I'll see you next time
