Your question is Cold-Start for Ranking. Take a moment with it on the right.
Talk me through your thinking if you like. When you're confident, submit your answer and I'll grade it like a real screen (7/10 or better passes).
How do you address cold-start items and users when designing ranking and recommendation models for Instacart's marketplace?
Explain a practical approach for Instacart search or personalized product recommendations. Describe the features, fallback logic, training and validation strategy, and how you would evaluate recommendations separately for new users, new items, and users or items with established history. Include production-quality Python that demonstrates the core approach.
