To succeed in the interview process at Attentive, you need to demonstrate a blend of technical capability and business intuition. Your preparation should focus on mastering the core competencies that our teams value most.

Technical Fluency – As a Business Analyst, you must be highly proficient in extracting and manipulating data. Interviewers will evaluate your ability to write clean, efficient SQL queries, focusing heavily on standard operations like joins, aggregations, and grouping. You can demonstrate strength here by writing code that is not only accurate but also easy for others to read and scale.

Problem-Solving & Case Analysis – Attentive heavily values how you approach ambiguous business problems. You will be evaluated on your ability to break down high-level questions into structured, logical steps. Strong candidates excel by thinking out loud, validating assumptions, and tying their analytical approach directly back to business outcomes like revenue or user retention.

Communication & Data Storytelling – Data is only as valuable as the narrative it supports. You will be judged on your ability to synthesize complex findings into clear, impactful presentations. Demonstrating strength in this area means creating concise slide decks, focusing on the "so what," and confidently fielding questions from cross-functional managers and executives.

The interview process for a Business Analyst at Attentive is designed to be thorough, evaluating both your technical hard skills and your ability to communicate insights effectively. The process typically begins with a standard recruiter phone screen to align on your background and expectations. This is followed by a hiring manager call, which often moves quickly and includes a mini case question to test your on-the-spot business intuition.

Depending on the specific team and seniority of the role, the process will then branch into either a live technical assessment or a comprehensive take-home assignment. For the live technical route, expect a hands-on SQL interview where you will share your screen and solve queries in real-time. For the project-based route, you will be given a data assignment to complete offline, which you must then distill into a concise presentation (often capped at around 10 slides) and deliver to a panel of managers.

If you successfully navigate the technical and presentation rounds, you will advance to final behavioral and leadership interviews. These final stages typically involve speaking with senior stakeholders, such as a VP or a Senior Analyst, to assess your cultural alignment, long-term potential, and ability to influence cross-functional teams.

This visual timeline outlines the typical progression from the initial recruiter screen through the final leadership interviews. Use this map to pace your preparation, ensuring you are ready for rapid-fire case questions early on, followed by deep technical or presentation-heavy stages in the middle of the loop. Keep in mind that the exact sequence—particularly the choice between a live SQL round versus a take-home presentation—may vary based on the specific team's needs.

Your interviews will test a specific set of skills tailored to the demands of a fast-growing SaaS and marketing technology platform. Focus your preparation on the following core areas.

SQL and Data Manipulation

Technical execution is a non-negotiable requirement for this role. You must prove that you can independently navigate relational databases to extract the right information. Interviewers are looking for accuracy, efficiency, and a solid grasp of foundational database concepts. Strong performance means you can write queries quickly without needing extensive hints.

Be ready to go over:

• Joins and Unions – Understanding the nuances between inner, left, right, and full joins, and knowing when to append data using unions.
• Aggregations and Grouping – Using GROUP BY, HAVING, and aggregate functions (like SUM, COUNT, AVG) to summarize large datasets.
• Data Filtering and Formatting – Applying complex WHERE clauses, handling NULL values, and casting data types correctly.
• Advanced concepts (less common) –
  • Window functions (ROW_NUMBER, RANK, LEAD, LAG)
  • Common Table Expressions (CTEs) and subqueries for complex logic
  • Query optimization and performance tuning

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Write a query to find the top 5 highest-performing SMS campaigns by click-through rate, grouped by client industry."
• "Given a table of user interactions, write a query to join it with customer metadata and calculate the total revenue generated per user segment."
• "How would you handle a situation where a left join results in unexpected duplicate rows?"

Business Acumen and Case Studies

Attentive needs analysts who understand the "why" behind the data. Hiring managers will test your strategic thinking through mini case questions, often delivered rapidly during initial calls. Strong candidates do not just rush to a mathematical answer; they ask clarifying questions, outline a framework, and consider the broader business context.

Be ready to go over:

• Metric Definition – Identifying the right Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for a given product feature or marketing campaign.
• Root Cause Analysis – Investigating sudden drops or spikes in business metrics (e.g., a sudden decline in SMS delivery rates).
• Product Strategy – Evaluating the trade-offs of launching a new feature or changing a pricing model.
• Advanced concepts (less common) –
  • A/B testing setup and statistical significance
  • Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) modeling
  • Cohort analysis and retention curves

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Our platform saw a 15% drop in message open rates over the weekend. Walk me through exactly how you would investigate this."
• "If we want to introduce a new analytics dashboard for our clients, what three metrics would you include to show them the most value?"
• "Estimate the total market size for an SMS marketing product targeting mid-sized e-commerce brands."

Data Storytelling and Presentation

For roles that require a take-home assignment, your ability to synthesize and present data is heavily scrutinized. You will likely be asked to create a slide deck (e.g., a strict 10-slide limit) and present it to a panel of managers. Strong performance here is defined by visual clarity, a logical narrative flow, and the ability to defend your recommendations during Q&A.

Be ready to go over:

• Executive Summaries – Distilling hours of data analysis into a single, punchy slide of key takeaways.
• Visual Best Practices – Choosing the right charts (bar, line, scatter) to represent specific trends without cluttering the slide.
• Actionable Recommendations – Ensuring every data point presented ties back to a concrete business action or strategy.
• Advanced concepts (less common) –
  • Handling hostile or skeptical Q&A from senior leadership
  • Presenting predictive modeling results to a non-technical audience

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Walk us through your slide deck. Why did you choose to highlight this specific demographic trend?"
• "If you only had two minutes to present this 10-slide deck to our VP, which slide would you focus on and why?"
• "What assumptions did you make when cleaning the raw data for this presentation, and how might they impact your final recommendation?"

As a Business Analyst at Attentive, your day-to-day work revolves around turning complex datasets into clear business strategies. You will spend a significant portion of your time querying databases, building reports, and designing dashboards that track the performance of SMS marketing campaigns and product features. Your deliverables will serve as the source of truth for various internal teams, ensuring that decisions are grounded in empirical evidence rather than intuition.

Collaboration is a massive part of this role. You will partner closely with Product Managers to define success metrics for new feature launches, work with Engineering to ensure data pipelines are capturing the right events, and support Customer Success teams by providing insights that help retain high-value clients. You are the bridge between raw technical data and business execution.

You will also drive proactive, strategic initiatives. Rather than just fulfilling data requests, you will be expected to identify trends independently—such as shifts in consumer engagement times or anomalies in message delivery rates—and present these findings to leadership. This requires a continuous balancing act between deep-dive analytical projects and rapid, ad-hoc query support for urgent business needs.

To be a competitive candidate for the Business Analyst position at Attentive, you must bring a solid mix of technical hard skills and strategic communication abilities. The role demands someone who is as comfortable writing complex code as they are presenting to a Vice President.

• Must-have skills –
  • Advanced proficiency in SQL (joins, aggregations, subqueries).
  • Strong business acumen and the ability to structure ambiguous case problems.
  • Exceptional presentation skills, particularly the ability to distill complex data into concise, executive-ready slide decks.
  • Experience with data visualization tools (e.g., Tableau, Looker, or similar).
• Nice-to-have skills –
  • Prior experience in SaaS, marketing technology, or e-commerce analytics.
  • Familiarity with Python or R for more advanced statistical analysis.
  • Experience designing and analyzing A/B tests.
  • Understanding of customer lifecycle metrics (CAC, LTV, Churn).

Q: Does Attentive provide feedback after interview rejections? No. Candidates consistently report that Attentive has a strict company policy against sharing specific feedback after an interview, even if you make it to the final rounds or complete a lengthy take-home assignment. Prepare yourself mentally for this, and rely on your own self-assessment to improve.

Q: How long does the take-home presentation round usually take? If you are assigned the take-home project, expect to spend several hours analyzing the data and building your deck. The presentation itself is usually strictly timed, often requiring you to distill your findings into exactly 10 slides and present to a panel of managers.

Q: What is the hiring manager screen like? The hiring manager screen can be very fast-paced and is primarily focused on assessing your quick-thinking abilities. Interviewers may seem rushed, so it is vital that you are concise. Expect a mini case question right on the spot, so have your problem-solving frameworks ready.

Q: How difficult is the live SQL interview? Most candidates rate the live SQL portion as standard to moderately easy, provided you have a strong grasp of the fundamentals. The focus is heavily on practical, everyday data manipulation—specifically joins, grouping, and aggregations—rather than obscure or highly complex algorithmic puzzles.