Tableau Interview Questions I - My experience

Hi Guys,

Glad to connect !!

I am one of the Tableau Lover :) Started my career as an IT professional in a Leading IT firm. My experience is into Business intelligence especially in Tableau and few other tools as well. 

There is no concept like there are some fixed interview questions for tableau. It completely depends on how you take it forward from the beginning of the interview. Here am listing few questions which I have faced in interviews throughout my journey.

Some of the questions may look silly and may include something general related to functional / Project along with Tableau because that is what I experienced :)

The first and foremost questions which we are prepared with is 

Tell me about your Project / Experience. (Might not be applicable for freshers. They should share about themselves)

1.    What do you think about Tableau compared to other tools?

2.    What is Data Visualization?

3.    Is tableau a reporting tool or data visualization tool?

4.    What are all the different products of tableau?

5.    What are the versions of Tableau you have worked so far? (whenever you have worked in multiple version you should be very sure about the major updates of the versions)

6.    What are all the different file versions of Tableau?

7.    Have you ever worked in Tableau public? If yes, what is the purpose of it and what have you built in Tableau Public?

8.    What is Tableau Online and Tableau Server and the difference?

9.    What is the major update in Tableau 9x over 8x or Tableau 10x over 9x?

10. Among the update brought in the recent version what you found interesting and what have used so far?

11. What is Tableau bookmark and how it differs from the Tableau workbook (.twb or .twbx)

12. Consider opening a bookmark file and a Tableau workbook. Are they one and the same? If yes, then what is the use of bookmarks?

13. Are you aware of Gartner magic quadrant for BI platform? If yes, who are all the leaders in 2016?

14. What is the major challenge in the project you have found so far?

15. what is the major challenge in tableau you have found so far?

16. What are the most complex reports you have built? (when you are answering this question get hands-on on that report. They might ask you to do)

17. What are all the difficulties you faced with larger data sets?

Let's get into more technical :)

18. What is the difference between sets and groups? (often asked in interview)

19. when do you use sets and when do you use groups? (explain a scenario)

20. what are combined fields in the tableau and when it will be useful?

21. Can you use sets/groups in a filter? if yes, why and how? If no, why?

22. Can you use sets/groups/parameters in calculated fields? if yes, why and how? If no, why?

23. What is the difference between parameters and filters?

24. When do you use parameters? (Probably you should be able to explain a scenario)

25. What are the limitations of parameters?

26. Can we do multi-select in parameters?

27. Can same parameters be used across multiple data sources?

28. Can we include data from the fields in parameters instead of hard coding? How?

29. How to create Top N and Bottom N values in tableau? If you are explaining using sets they might ask is there any other way to do it?

30. How to pass database parameters?

31. How to use nested parameters and their pros and cons?

32. What is a calculated field?

33. How to achieve YOY values (For e.g. YOY sales or profit) in tableau? If your answer is using quick table calculation then they might expect for another way to do it (using calculated field)

34. Get an idea as how to calculate YTD, MTD, YOY, MOM, Previous year sales at a given period (especially using calculated field as there are lot of ways provided Tableau experts)

35. what is the Rank function in Tableau? (go through all the 5 rank functions in tableau-like Rank, Rank_dense, Rank_combined etc.,)

36. What is the index function in tableau and the difference between rank and index functions?

37. There are some scenarios like they may ask what is the result of all 5 rank functions given a number say (1,3,4,3)

38. what is Lookup function and have you used it so far? how and when?

39. How do you manage to use filters when you are using lookups? (questions might be in different forms)

40. What is a dimension and a measure in tableau?

41. How tableau automatically identifies a dimension and a measure? what is the criteria?

42. Have you ever noticed that some dimension appearing as a measure in tableau? why?

43. What are the blue and green pills highlighted across dimensions and measures?

44. What is discrete and continuous in tableau?

45. How to change a field from discrete to continuous and what is the significance?

46. Is date (Full date) a discrete or continuous value?

47. How many columns by default tableau will accept in a report? If we want more is there any way to change it? (this question might be asked in different forms)

48. How to create a bin? what is the purpose?

49. what is aggregation and de-aggregation and the significance?

50.  What is the maximum number of tables we can join in tableau?

I know that I have not covered lot of topics which I will be covering in my next post :) I will try to cover some scenario based questions as well which I have experienced. Stay Tuned :)