Why you should use PySpark Test?

The PySpark Test makes use of scenario-based questions to test for on-the-job skills as opposed to theoretical knowledge, ensuring that candidates who do well on this screening test have the relavant skills. The questions are designed to covered following on-the-job aspects: Installing PySpark Creating and using PySpark UDFs Working with PySpark RDDs Python programming skills SQL querying and manipulation Machine learning with PySpark Data science concepts Handling exceptions and errors in PySpark Understanding distributed computing with PySpark Optimizing PySpark jobs for performance

PySpark Test

Q: What topics are covered in the PySpark Test?

Installing PySpark PySpark UDF PySpark RDD Python SQL Machine Learning Data Science

About the test:

The PySpark Test evaluates a candidate's knowledge and skills in using PySpark, a Python API for Apache Spark. The test includes coding questions to evaluate programming competency in PySpark, as well as multiple-choice questions to assess understanding of related topics such as Python, SQL, Machine Learning and Data Science.

Covered skills:

Installing PySpark
PySpark RDD
SQL
Data Science

PySpark UDF
Python
Machine Learning

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9 reasons why

Adaface PySpark Assessment Test is the most accurate way to shortlist Data Engineers

Reason #1

Tests for on-the-job skills

The PySpark Test helps recruiters and hiring managers identify qualified candidates from a pool of resumes, and helps in taking objective hiring decisions. It reduces the administrative overhead of interviewing too many candidates and saves time by filtering out unqualified candidates at the first step of the hiring process.

The test screens for the following skills that hiring managers look for in candidates:

Installing and setting up PySpark
Creating and using PySpark UDFs (User Defined Functions)
Working with PySpark RDDs (Resilient Distributed Datasets)
Strong proficiency in Python programming language
Proficiency in SQL querying
Understanding of Machine Learning concepts in PySpark
Experience with Data Science techniques and tools
Ability to analyze and process large volumes of data
Knowledge of PySpark's data manipulation and transformation operations
Familiarity with PySpark's data visualization tools
Understanding of PySpark's distributed computing capabilities
Proficiency in debugging and troubleshooting PySpark code

Reason #2

No trick questions

Traditional assessment tools use trick questions and puzzles for the screening, which creates a lot of frustration among candidates about having to go through irrelevant screening assessments.

View sample questions

The main reason we started Adaface is that traditional pre-employment assessment platforms are not a fair way for companies to evaluate candidates. At Adaface, our mission is to help companies find great candidates by assessing on-the-job skills required for a role.

Why we started Adaface

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Reason #3

Non-googleable questions

We have a very high focus on the quality of questions that test for on-the-job skills. Every question is non-googleable and we have a very high bar for the level of subject matter experts we onboard to create these questions. We have crawlers to check if any of the questions are leaked online. If/ when a question gets leaked, we get an alert. We change the question for you & let you know.

How we design questions

These are just a small sample from our library of 10,000+ questions. The actual questions on this PySpark Test will be non-googleable.

🧐 Question
Medium ZeroDivisionError and IndexError Exceptions	Solve
What will the following Python code output?
Medium Session File Handling Dictionary	Solve
The function high_sess should compute the highest number of events per session of each user in the database by reading a comma-separated value input file of session data. The result should be returned from the function as a dictionary. The first column of each line in the input file is expected to contain the user’s name represented as a string. The second column is expected to contain an integer representing the events in a session. Here is an example input file: Tony,10 Stark,12 Black,25 Your program should ignore a non-conforming line like this one. Stark,3 Widow,6 Widow,14 The resulting return value for this file should be the following dictionary: { 'Stark':12, 'Black':25, 'Tony':10, 'Widow':14 } What should replace the CODE TO FILL line to complete the function?
Medium Max Code Arrays	Solve
Below are code lines to create a Python function. Ignoring indentation, what lines should be used and in what order for the following function to be complete:
Medium Recursive Function Recursion Dictionary Lists	Solve
Consider the following Python code: In the above code, recursive_search is a function that takes a dictionary (data) and a target key (target) as arguments. It searches for the target key within the dictionary, which could potentially have nested dictionaries and lists as values, and returns the value associated with the target key. If the target key is not found, it returns None. nested_dict is a dictionary that contains multiple levels of nested dictionaries and lists. The recursive_search function is then called with nested_dict as the data and 'target_key' as the target. What will the output be after executing the above code?
Medium Stacking problem Stack Linkedlist	Solve
What does the below function ‘fun’ does? A: Sum of digits of the number passed to fun. B: Number of digits of the number passed to fun. C: 0 if the number passed to fun is divisible by 10. 1 otherwise. D: Sum of all digits number passed to fun except for the last digit.
Medium Multi Select JOIN GROUP BY	Solve
Consider the following SQL table: How many rows does the following SQL query return?
Medium nth highest sales Nested queries User Defined Functions	Solve
Consider the following SQL table: Which of the following SQL commands will find the ‘nth highest Sales’ if it exists (returns null otherwise)?
Medium Select & IN Nested queries	Solve
Consider the following SQL table: Which of the following SQL queries would return the year when neither a football or cricket winner was chosen?
Medium Sorting Ubers Nested queries Join Comparison operators	Solve
Consider the following SQL table: What will be the first two tuples resulting from the following SQL command?
Hard With, AVG & SUM MAX() MIN() Aggregate functions	Solve
Consider the following SQL table: How many tuples does the following query return?

	🧐 Question	🔧 Skill
	Medium ZeroDivisionError and IndexError Exceptions	2 mins Python	Solve
What will the following Python code output?
	Medium Session File Handling Dictionary	2 mins Python	Solve
The function high_sess should compute the highest number of events per session of each user in the database by reading a comma-separated value input file of session data. The result should be returned from the function as a dictionary. The first column of each line in the input file is expected to contain the user’s name represented as a string. The second column is expected to contain an integer representing the events in a session. Here is an example input file: Tony,10 Stark,12 Black,25 Your program should ignore a non-conforming line like this one. Stark,3 Widow,6 Widow,14 The resulting return value for this file should be the following dictionary: { 'Stark':12, 'Black':25, 'Tony':10, 'Widow':14 } What should replace the CODE TO FILL line to complete the function?
	Medium Max Code Arrays	2 mins Python	Solve
Below are code lines to create a Python function. Ignoring indentation, what lines should be used and in what order for the following function to be complete:
	Medium Recursive Function Recursion Dictionary Lists	3 mins Python	Solve
Consider the following Python code: In the above code, recursive_search is a function that takes a dictionary (data) and a target key (target) as arguments. It searches for the target key within the dictionary, which could potentially have nested dictionaries and lists as values, and returns the value associated with the target key. If the target key is not found, it returns None. nested_dict is a dictionary that contains multiple levels of nested dictionaries and lists. The recursive_search function is then called with nested_dict as the data and 'target_key' as the target. What will the output be after executing the above code?
	Medium Stacking problem Stack Linkedlist	4 mins Python	Solve
What does the below function ‘fun’ does? A: Sum of digits of the number passed to fun. B: Number of digits of the number passed to fun. C: 0 if the number passed to fun is divisible by 10. 1 otherwise. D: Sum of all digits number passed to fun except for the last digit.
	Medium Multi Select JOIN GROUP BY	2 mins SQL	Solve
Consider the following SQL table: How many rows does the following SQL query return?
	Medium nth highest sales Nested queries User Defined Functions	3 mins SQL	Solve
Consider the following SQL table: Which of the following SQL commands will find the ‘nth highest Sales’ if it exists (returns null otherwise)?
	Medium Select & IN Nested queries	3 mins SQL	Solve
Consider the following SQL table: Which of the following SQL queries would return the year when neither a football or cricket winner was chosen?
	Medium Sorting Ubers Nested queries Join Comparison operators	3 mins SQL	Solve
Consider the following SQL table: What will be the first two tuples resulting from the following SQL command?
	Hard With, AVG & SUM MAX() MIN() Aggregate functions	2 mins SQL	Solve
Consider the following SQL table: How many tuples does the following query return?

	🧐 Question	🔧 Skill	💪 Difficulty	⌛ Time
	ZeroDivisionError and IndexError Exceptions	Python	Medium	2 mins	Solve
What will the following Python code output?
	Session File Handling Dictionary	Python	Medium	2 mins	Solve
The function high_sess should compute the highest number of events per session of each user in the database by reading a comma-separated value input file of session data. The result should be returned from the function as a dictionary. The first column of each line in the input file is expected to contain the user’s name represented as a string. The second column is expected to contain an integer representing the events in a session. Here is an example input file: Tony,10 Stark,12 Black,25 Your program should ignore a non-conforming line like this one. Stark,3 Widow,6 Widow,14 The resulting return value for this file should be the following dictionary: { 'Stark':12, 'Black':25, 'Tony':10, 'Widow':14 } What should replace the CODE TO FILL line to complete the function?
	Max Code Arrays	Python	Medium	2 mins	Solve
Below are code lines to create a Python function. Ignoring indentation, what lines should be used and in what order for the following function to be complete:
	Recursive Function Recursion Dictionary Lists	Python	Medium	3 mins	Solve
Consider the following Python code: In the above code, recursive_search is a function that takes a dictionary (data) and a target key (target) as arguments. It searches for the target key within the dictionary, which could potentially have nested dictionaries and lists as values, and returns the value associated with the target key. If the target key is not found, it returns None. nested_dict is a dictionary that contains multiple levels of nested dictionaries and lists. The recursive_search function is then called with nested_dict as the data and 'target_key' as the target. What will the output be after executing the above code?
	Stacking problem Stack Linkedlist	Python	Medium	4 mins	Solve
What does the below function ‘fun’ does? A: Sum of digits of the number passed to fun. B: Number of digits of the number passed to fun. C: 0 if the number passed to fun is divisible by 10. 1 otherwise. D: Sum of all digits number passed to fun except for the last digit.
	Multi Select JOIN GROUP BY	SQL	Medium	2 mins	Solve
Consider the following SQL table: How many rows does the following SQL query return?
	nth highest sales Nested queries User Defined Functions	SQL	Medium	3 mins	Solve
Consider the following SQL table: Which of the following SQL commands will find the ‘nth highest Sales’ if it exists (returns null otherwise)?
	Select & IN Nested queries	SQL	Medium	3 mins	Solve
Consider the following SQL table: Which of the following SQL queries would return the year when neither a football or cricket winner was chosen?
	Sorting Ubers Nested queries Join Comparison operators	SQL	Medium	3 mins	Solve
Consider the following SQL table: What will be the first two tuples resulting from the following SQL command?
	With, AVG & SUM MAX() MIN() Aggregate functions	SQL	Hard	2 mins	Solve
Consider the following SQL table: How many tuples does the following query return?

Reason #4

1200+ customers in 75 countries

With Adaface, we were able to optimise our initial screening process by upwards of 75%, freeing up precious time for both hiring managers and our talent acquisition team alike!

Brandon Lee, Head of People, Love, Bonito

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Reason #5

Designed for elimination, not selection

The most important thing while implementing the pre-employment PySpark Test in your hiring process is that it is an elimination tool, not a selection tool. In other words: you want to use the test to eliminate the candidates who do poorly on the test, not to select the candidates who come out at the top. While they are super valuable, pre-employment tests do not paint the entire picture of a candidate’s abilities, knowledge, and motivations. Multiple easy questions are more predictive of a candidate's ability than fewer hard questions. Harder questions are often "trick" based questions, which do not provide any meaningful signal about the candidate's skillset.

Science behind Adaface tests

Reason #6

1 click candidate invites

Email invites: You can send candidates an email invite to the PySpark Test from your dashboard by entering their email address.

Public link: You can create a public link for each test that you can share with candidates.

API or integrations: You can invite candidates directly from your ATS by using our pre-built integrations with popular ATS systems or building a custom integration with your in-house ATS.

Reason #7

Detailed scorecards & benchmarks

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Reason #8

High completion rate

Adaface tests are conversational, low-stress, and take just 25-40 mins to complete.

This is why Adaface has the highest test-completion rate (86%), which is more than 2x better than traditional assessments.

Reason #9

Advanced Proctoring

Learn more

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About the PySpark Online Test

Why you should use Pre-employment PySpark Test?

The PySpark Test makes use of scenario-based questions to test for on-the-job skills as opposed to theoretical knowledge, ensuring that candidates who do well on this screening test have the relavant skills. The questions are designed to covered following on-the-job aspects:

Installing PySpark
Creating and using PySpark UDFs
Working with PySpark RDDs
Python programming skills
SQL querying and manipulation
Machine learning with PySpark
Data science concepts
Handling exceptions and errors in PySpark
Understanding distributed computing with PySpark
Optimizing PySpark jobs for performance

Once the test is sent to a candidate, the candidate receives a link in email to take the test. For each candidate, you will receive a detailed report with skills breakdown and benchmarks to shortlist the top candidates from your pool.

What topics are covered in the PySpark Test?

Installing PySpark
Installing PySpark involves setting up the necessary dependencies and packages to run PySpark applications. It is important to measure this skill in the test to assess the candidate's understanding of the PySpark environment and their ability to navigate the installation process.
PySpark UDF
PySpark UDF refers to User-Defined Functions in PySpark, which allow users to define custom functions to process and manipulate data. Measuring this skill helps evaluate the candidate's proficiency in leveraging PySpark's powerful UDF capabilities for advanced data transformations.
PySpark RDD
PySpark RDD (Resilient Distributed Dataset) is a fundamental data structure used in PySpark for efficient distributed processing. Testing this skill allows recruiters to gauge the candidate's knowledge of RDDs and their ability to perform parallel operations on distributed datasets.
Python
Python is a widely-used programming language known for its simplicity and versatility. Evaluating a candidate's command over Python in the PySpark context helps determine their familiarity with the language and their ability to leverage its libraries and functionalities within PySpark applications.
SQL
SQL (Structured Query Language) is essential for data manipulation and querying in the context of PySpark. Assessing SQL skills ensures that the candidate can effectively interact with databases, perform complex queries, and process data using SQL expressions and operations in PySpark.
Machine Learning
Machine Learning is a branch of artificial intelligence with algorithms, models, and techniques that enable computers to learn from and make predictions or decisions based on data. Testing this skill assists in evaluating the candidate's understanding of machine learning concepts and their ability to apply relevant algorithms to solve real-world data problems within PySpark.
Data Science
Data Science involves the analysis, interpretation, and extraction of valuable insights from structured and unstructured data. Measuring this skill in the test helps identify candidates who can effectively apply statistical and analytical techniques to transform raw data into meaningful information using PySpark.
Full list of covered topics
The actual topics of the questions in the final test will depend on your job description and requirements. However, here's a list of topics you can expect the questions for PySpark Test to be based on.
PySpark Installation
PySpark Configuration
PySpark DataFrames
PySpark SQL
PySpark MLlib
PySpark Streaming
PySpark GraphX
PySpark DataFrame API
PySpark RDD API
PySpark UDFs
PySpark Data preprocessing
PySpark Data visualization
PySpark Machine Learning algorithms
PySpark Pipeline
PySpark Model Evaluation
PySpark Feature Engineering
Python Basics
Python Control Flow
Python Functions
Python Classes and Objects
Python File I/O
Python Error Handling
Python Modules and Packages
Python List Manipulation
Python String Manipulation
Python Dictionary Manipulation
Python File Manipulation
Python Regular Expressions
Python NumPy
Python Pandas
Python Matplotlib
SQL Basics
SQL SELECT Queries
SQL JOIN Queries
SQL Aggregate Functions
SQL Subqueries
SQL Constraints
SQL Views
SQL Indexes
SQL Triggers
SQL Stored Procedures
Machine Learning Concepts
Supervised Learning
Unsupervised Learning
Regression
Classification
Clustering
Feature Extraction
Data Preprocessing
Evaluation Metrics
Data Visualization
Data Cleaning
Data Transformation
Data Sampling
Data Splitting
Model Training
Model Evaluation
Model Deployment
Data Science Concepts
Exploratory Data Analysis
Data Manipulation
Data Visualization
Statistical Analysis
Data Mining
Data Wrangling
Data Integration

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What roles can I use the PySpark Test for?

Data Engineer
Data Analyst
Data Scientist
Big Data Engineer
Business Analyst

How is the PySpark Test customized for senior candidates?

For intermediate/ experienced candidates, we customize the assessment questions to include advanced topics and increase the difficulty level of the questions. This might include adding questions on topics like

Building and evaluating machine learning models with PySpark
Working with PySpark DataFrames
Implementing feature engineering techniques in PySpark
Applying statistical analysis with PySpark
Tuning and optimizing PySpark ML pipelines
Performing data preprocessing and cleaning with PySpark
Understanding PySpark SQL and DataFrame API
Using PySpark to interact with various data sources
Applying advanced analytics techniques with PySpark
Deploying PySpark applications to production environments

The coding question for experienced candidates will be of a higher difficulty level to evaluate more hands-on experience.

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The hiring managers felt that through the technical questions that they asked during the panel interviews, they were able to tell which candidates had better scores, and differentiated with those who did not score as well. They are highly satisfied with the quality of candidates shortlisted with the Adaface screening.

85%

reduction in screening time

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PySpark Hiring Test FAQs

Can I combine multiple skills into one custom assessment?

Yes, absolutely. Custom assessments are set up based on your job description, and will include questions on all must-have skills you specify. Here's a quick guide on how you can request a custom test.

Do you have any anti-cheating or proctoring features in place?

We have the following anti-cheating features in place:

Non-googleable questions
IP proctoring
Screen proctoring
Web proctoring
Webcam proctoring
Plagiarism detection
Secure browser
Copy paste protection

Read more about the proctoring features.

How do I interpret test scores?

The primary thing to keep in mind is that an assessment is an elimination tool, not a selection tool. A skills assessment is optimized to help you eliminate candidates who are not technically qualified for the role, it is not optimized to help you find the best candidate for the role. So the ideal way to use an assessment is to decide a threshold score (typically 55%, we help you benchmark) and invite all candidates who score above the threshold for the next rounds of interview.

What experience level can I use this test for?

Each Adaface assessment is customized to your job description/ ideal candidate persona (our subject matter experts will pick the right questions for your assessment from our library of 10000+ questions). This assessment can be customized for any experience level.

Does every candidate get the same questions?

Yes, it makes it much easier for you to compare candidates. Options for MCQ questions and the order of questions are randomized. We have anti-cheating/ proctoring features in place. In our enterprise plan, we also have the option to create multiple versions of the same assessment with questions of similar difficulty levels.