10 Hormel Foods SQL Interview Questions (Updated 2024)
Hormel Foods employees use SQL to analyze sales data, helping them identify customer preferences and predict future demand for their products. This is also crucial for optimizing supply chain operations, ensuring that perishable goods are managed effectively and reach consumers on time, this is why Hormel Foods includes SQL coding questions in interviews for Data Science, Analytics, and Data Engineering roles.
Thus, to help you prep, here's 10 Hormel Foods SQL interview questions – able to answer them all?
10 Hormel Foods SQL Interview Questions
SQL Question 1: Identifying VIP Customers at Hormel Foods
Hormel Foods needs to identify the VIP customers who purchase their products frequently and in large volumes. These are the customers who have purchased more than 500 units in total or made more than 100 purchases in the past year. Please write a SQL query to identify these VIP customers.
Assume that there are two tables: and . The table keeps track of each purchase made by a customer, while the table keeps an account of every customer.
Example Input:
| purchase_id | customer_id | date_of_purchase | product_id | quantity |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5342 | 100 | 06/22/2022 | 101 | 50 |
| 8423 | 200 | 07/03/2022 | 102 | 200 |
| 8391 | 300 | 08/09/2022 | 103 | 600 |
| 7485 | 100 | 08/25/2022 | 101 | 450 |
| 6894 | 400 | 09/10/2022 | 104 | 75 |
Example Input:
| customer_id | full_name | registration_date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 100 | John Doe | john_d@example.com | 01/05/2022 |
| 200 | Mary Johnson | mary_j@example.com | 02/14/2022 |
| 300 | James Smith | james_s@example.com | 02/25/2022 |
| 400 | Patricia Williams | patricia_w@example.com | 03/18/2022 |
Answer:
This query will return VIP customers who have purchased more than 500 units or made more than 100 purchases in the past year. The fields returned are: , , , , and .
To practice a super-customer analysis question on DataLemur's free online SQL coding environment, try this Microsoft Azure Cloud SQL Interview Question:
Dive into Hormel Foods' story on revolutionizing food innovation with artificial intelligence to see how they are transforming their product development processes! Learning about Hormel's innovative strategies can give you a better understanding of how technology is impacting the food industry.
SQL Question 2: 2nd Highest Salary
Suppose there was a table of Hormel Foods employee salary data. Write a SQL query to find the 2nd highest salary among all employees.
Hormel Foods Example Input:
| employee_id | salary |
|---|---|
| 1 | 2500 |
| 2 | 800 |
| 3 | 1000 |
| 4 | 1200 |
Example Output:
| second_highest_salary |
|---|
| 1200 |
Test your SQL query for this problem directly within the browser on DataLemur:
Answer:
You can find a step-by-step solution here: 2nd Highest Salary.
SQL Question 3: What do the SQL commands / do?
The / operator is used to return all rows from the first statement that are not returned by the second statement.
Note that is available in PostgreSQL and SQL Server, while MINUS is available in MySQL and Oracle (but don't stress about knowing which DBMS supports what exact commands since the interviewers at Hormel Foods should be lenient!).
For a tangible example in PostgreSQL, suppose you were doing an HR Analytics project for Hormel Foods, and had access to Hormel Foods's contractors and employees data. Assume that some employees were previously contractors, and vice versa, and thus would show up in both tables. You could use operator to find all contractors who never were a employee using this query:
SQL Question 4: Average Monthly Rating Per Product
For Hormel Foods, let's consider they want to analyze their product ratings on a monthly basis, for each product, to understand customers' feedback and thus improve or maintain their product quality.
The task is to write a SQL query to return a table that includes each product's average review rating per month. The column in the table ranges from 1-5; this indicates the satisfaction of the customers with the respective product, where 1 being least satisfied and 5 being most satisfied.
Example Input:
| review_id | user_id | submit_date | product_id | stars |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4512 | 123 | 08/23/2021 | 50001 | 4 |
| 7411 | 456 | 08/27/2021 | 69852 | 3 |
| 6318 | 789 | 08/27/2021 | 50001 | 5 |
| 8417 | 012 | 09/01/2021 | 24689 | 2 |
| 9123 | 345 | 09/05/2021 | 24689 | 3 |
Example Output:
| month | product_id | avg_stars |
|---|---|---|
| 8 | 50001 | 4.50 |
| 8 | 69852 | 3.00 |
| 9 | 24689 | 2.50 |
Answer:
This SQL query uses a window function to calculate the average stars each product has received for each month. The clause in the partition is essentially dividing our data into groups based on the month and product_id so that function can operate on these separate groups independently. Then, it orders our final result by and .
To practice another window function question on DataLemur's free online SQL code editor, solve this Amazon SQL question asked in a BI Engineer interview:
SQL Question 5: Can you explain the purpose of the SQL constraint?
The constraint is used to ensure the uniqueness of the data in a column or set of columns in a table. It prevents the insertion of duplicate values in the specified column or columns and helps to ensure the integrity and reliability of the data in the database.
For example, say you were on the Marketing Analytics team at Hormel Foods and were doing some automated keyword research:
Your keyword database might store SEO data like this:
In this example, the constraint is applied to the keyword field to ensure that each keyword is unique. This helps to ensure the integrity of the data in the database and prevents errors that could occur if two rows had the same keyword.
SQL Question 6: Analyzing Product Sales and Suppliers for Hormel Foods
Hormel Foods Corporation is an American company that focuses significantly on producing various food products and meats, primarily pork and turkey. Assume you are given two tables - and .
table includes details such as , , , and .
table includes supplier details like , , and .
You are asked to write an SQL query to achieve following tasks:
- Find out the total units sold by each supplier.
- Identify the top-selling product for each supplier.
Example Input:
| product_id | product_name | supplier_id | units_sold |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Spam | 1 | 500 |
| 2 | Dinty Moore Beef Stew | 2 | 350 |
| 3 | Skippy Peanut Butter | 3 | 700 |
| 4 | Hormel Chili | 1 | 600 |
| 5 | Corned Beef Hash | 2 | 200 |
Example Input:
| supplier_id | supplier_name | supplier_location |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Smith's Food Group | USA |
| 2 | Jones's Farm LLC | USA |
| 3 | Miller's Groundnut Co. | USA |
Answer:
This solution first calculates the total units sold by each supplier using a CTE (Common Table Expressions) . Then, it finds the top-selling product for each supplier using another CTE , by using the window function, ordered by units sold in descending order. Finally, it combines these two CTEs on the supplier name and filters based on the rank of products, retaining only the top selling product details for each supplier.
SQL Question 7: What's the purpose of the function in SQL?
The function accepts an unlimited number of input arguments, and returns the first argument from that list which isn't null.If all input arguments are null, will return null too.
For example, suppose you had data on Hormel Foods salespeople, and the amount of deals they closed. This data was exported from a 3rd-party system CRM, which exports a value if the salesperson didn't close any deals.
| sales_person | closed_deals |
|---|---|
| Jason Wright | 4 |
| Drew Jackson | NULL |
| Chris Ho | 2 |
| Adam Cohen | NULL |
| Samantha Perez | 3 |
To get rid of these NULLs, and replace them with zero's (so you can do some further analytics like find the average number of closed deals), you would use the function as follows:
You'd get the following output:
| sales_person | closed_deals |
|---|---|
| Jason Wright | 4 |
| Drew Jackson | 0 |
| Chris Ho | 2 |
| Adam Cohen | 0 |
| Samantha Perez | 3 |
SQL Question 8: Filtering Product Sales Data
As a data analyst at Hormel Foods, you have been asked to filter down the data from the product sales database for a specific report. The report needs to show only the customer records where the customer has bought 'SPAM' product(s) on Saturdays or Sundays of the year 2021, they are from the 'Minnesota' state and their total expenditure for the 'SPAM' product(s) is above $500. Assume you have two tables, with sales data and with customer information.
Example Input:
| sale_id | customer_id | product_name | sale_price | sale_date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1001 | 1 | SPAM | 250 | 2021-01-02 |
| 1002 | 1 | SPAM | 300 | 2021-01-03 |
| 1003 | 2 | Sausage | 100 | 2021-01-04 |
| 1004 | 3 | SPAM | 200 | 2021-01-05 |
| 1005 | 1 | Bacon | 50 | 2021-01-06 |
Example Input:
| customer_id | customer_name | state |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | John Doe | Minnesota |
| 2 | Jane Doe | Wisconsin |
| 3 | James Doe | Minnesota |
| 4 | Jenny Doe | Minnesota |
Answer:
This SQL query will return the names of customers who have purchased SPAM on Saturdays or Sundays in 2021, are based in Minnesota, and have spent more than 500.
SQL Question 9: Average Monthly Sales Quantity of Hormel Foods
As a data analyst for Hormel Foods, you have been asked to analyze the sales data. Your manager would like to know the average quantity of each product sold per month. Write a SQL query to find this information.
Example Input:
| sale_id | product_id | sale_date | quantity |
|---|---|---|---|
| 101 | 1 | 01/03/2022 | 200 |
| 102 | 2 | 01/06/2022 | 50 |
| 103 | 1 | 01/11/2022 | 250 |
| 104 | 2 | 02/01/2022 | 100 |
| 105 | 3 | 02/07/2022 | 500 |
| 106 | 1 | 02/13/2022 | 300 |
| 107 | 3 | 03/01/2022 | 400 |
| 108 | 2 | 03/10/2022 | 80 |
| 109 | 3 | 03/26/2022 | 350 |
Example Output:
| month | product_id | avg_quantity |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | 225.00 |
| 1 | 2 | 50.00 |
| 2 | 1 | 300.00 |
| 2 | 2 | 100.00 |
| 2 | 3 | 500.00 |
| 3 | 1 | 0.00 |
| 3 | 2 | 80.00 |
| 3 | 3 | 375.00 |
Answer:
In the query above, the function is used to get the month from the column. The data is then grouped by both the and . The function is used to compute the average quantity for each product sold per month. The resulting data is then ordered based on the first, then on the .
SQL Question 10: Have you ever had to optimize a slow SQL query? How did you do it?
First things first, figure out why the query is slow! You can use and commands in PostgreSQL to identify any performance bottlenecks. You might discover that your query is inefficient, or that there are many database writes at the same time you are doing a read, or maybe too many people are concurrently running queries on the same database server.
For Data Analyst and Data Science positions, knowing the ins-and-outs of SQL performance tuning is out-of-scope for the SQL interview round. However, knowing that joins are expensive, and indexes can speed up queries, is generally enough of an answer for Hormel Foods SQL interviews.
Hormel Foods SQL Interview Tips
The best way to prepare for a SQL interview, besides making sure you have strong SQL fundamentals, is to practice a ton of real SQL questions that were asked in recent job interviews. In addition to solving the earlier Hormel Foods SQL interview questions, you should also solve the 200+ DataLemur interview questions which come from companies like FAANG (FB, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google).
Each interview question has multiple hints, fully explained answers along with a discussion board to see how others solved it and best of all, there's an interactive SQL code editor so you can easily right in the browser your SQL query answer and have it graded.
To prep for the Hormel Foods SQL interview you can also be a great idea to practice SQL problems from other food and facilities companies like:
However, if your SQL foundations are weak, don't worry about diving straight into solving questions – go learn SQL with this SQL interview tutorial.
This tutorial covers SQL concepts such as how window functions work and RANK() window functions – both of which show up routinely during Hormel Foods interviews.
Hormel Foods Data Science Interview Tips
What Do Hormel Foods Data Science Interviews Cover?
In addition to SQL query questions, the other types of questions to practice for the Hormel Foods Data Science Interview are:
- AB Testing Questions
- Python Pandas or R Coding Questions
- Product Data Science Interview Questions
- Machine Learning Questions
- Behavioral Interview Questions focussed on Hormel Foods company values
How To Prepare for Hormel Foods Data Science Interviews?
To prepare for Hormel Foods Data Science interviews read the book Ace the Data Science Interview because it's got:
- 201 interview questions sourced from Facebook, Google, & Amazon
- a crash course on SQL, Product-Sense & ML
- over 1000+ 5-star reviews on Amazon
Don't ignore the behavioral interview – prepare for that with this list of behavioral interview questions for Data Scientists.