Natural Language Processing

Term from Data Science industry explained for recruiters

Natural Language Processing (NLP) is a technology that helps computers understand and work with human language. Think of it as teaching computers to read, understand, and respond to text and speech the way humans do. Companies use NLP for things like customer service chatbots, analyzing customer feedback, or sorting through large amounts of text documents. This technology is part of artificial intelligence and machine learning, similar to how tools like ChatGPT work. When you see this on a resume, it means the candidate has experience making computers understand and process human language in useful ways for businesses.

Examples in Resumes

Developed Natural Language Processing models to automatically categorize customer support tickets

Used NLP and Natural Language Processing techniques to analyze customer feedback from social media

Built Natural Language Processing systems to improve search functionality in company documents

Typical job title: "NLP Engineers"

Also try searching for:

Machine Learning Engineer Data Scientist NLP Engineer AI Engineer Language Processing Specialist Text Analytics Engineer Computational Linguist

Where to Find NLP Engineers

Example Interview Questions

Senior Level Questions

Q: How would you design an NLP system to handle multiple languages for a global company?

Expected Answer: A senior candidate should explain approaches for handling different languages, mention ways to make the system work across various cultures, and discuss how to maintain quality across different languages.

Q: How would you improve the accuracy of a chatbot that's giving wrong answers?

Expected Answer: Should discuss methods for evaluating chatbot performance, ways to collect and use customer feedback, and approaches for training the system with better data to improve accuracy.

Mid Level Questions

Q: What steps would you take to analyze customer feedback from social media?

Expected Answer: Should explain how to collect social media data, clean it up, identify positive and negative comments, and create reports that show trends in customer opinions.

Q: How would you build a system to automatically categorize support tickets?

Expected Answer: Should describe how to organize customer requests into categories, explain how to train the system with examples, and discuss how to measure if it's working correctly.

Junior Level Questions

Q: What is the difference between rule-based and machine learning approaches in NLP?

Expected Answer: Should explain that rule-based systems use human-written rules while machine learning systems learn patterns from examples, and give simple examples of when each might be used.

Q: How would you clean and prepare text data for analysis?

Expected Answer: Should describe basic steps like removing special characters, handling uppercase/lowercase text, and dealing with common words that don't add meaning.

Experience Level Indicators

Junior (0-2 years)

  • Basic text processing and cleaning
  • Simple sentiment analysis
  • Working with common NLP libraries
  • Basic machine learning concepts

Mid (2-5 years)

  • Building custom NLP solutions
  • Advanced text classification
  • Integration with business applications
  • Performance optimization

Senior (5+ years)

  • Large-scale NLP system design
  • Multiple language support
  • Leading NLP projects
  • Advanced AI model development

Red Flags to Watch For

  • No experience with real-world text data
  • Lack of understanding of basic machine learning concepts
  • No experience with popular NLP tools or libraries
  • Cannot explain NLP concepts in simple terms