Financial Administrator

Sometimes you need to take a step backward to move your career forward. Starting in an entry-level role would allow me to learn your business from the ground up.

The career that I’ve been in is so different than yours that I would love the opportunity to start over again in your field. The salary cut will be well worth it.

As someone in a leadership position, I find that wise and efficient delegation is the best way to get the job done. I have confidence in my team members and believe that they have the expertise and good judgment needed to perform. In my position, I frequently need to rely on information generated by others and to collaborate with team members. When a leader is unable to delegate, other team members are discouraged from showing initiative and the leader ends up taking on an unrealistic workload, which inevitably leads to mistakes and systemic dysfunction. I consider my ability to delegate and utilize the strengths of my team members to be one of my greatest assets as a leader.

Here the employer is exploring your resilience and ability to persist in the face of a challenge. Setbacks and difficult clients are part of the financial business and you need to demonstrate your ability to deal with this. Provide an example that clearly shows your determination and the interpersonal skills used to reach a positive outcome.

I was hired by a woman who was on her way out. She asked me to be her “fall guy” on a number of assignments. I just learned to drop the assignments off with my boss on the day that they were due, and when the managers would ring me up, I would recommend that they simply follow up with her. This kept me out of hot water with my boss and with her superiors.

I think that with the home office located halfway across the globe, there is a very small risk that one might not have the chance to interact with the key decision makers as often as might be ideal. On the other hand, teleconferencing, email, faxing, and having a 24/7 work ethic will go a long way towards bridging the gap.

I sincerely believe that being a great writer requires one major skill beyond being able to string sentences together, and that quality is empathy. I think that, rather than looking at my skin colour, your company needs to consider whether or not I can empathize with our target market, and the answer is certainly yes.

Why is that, exactly? It seems to me that I am probably more qualified to handle this position than anyone, man or woman.

My father’s career as a diplomat took our family around the world seven times, and I even spent my junior year abroad in the Far East. I would need far less training than an American man who grew up here and has never worked outside our borders.

First, I would try to credit her publicly with the ideas that were hers. Sometimes, by being generous with credit, it spurs the other person to “return the favour.”

If that doesn’t solve it, I’d try to work out an arrangement where we each agreed to present the ideas that were our own to our bosses. If that doesn’t work, I would openly discuss the situation with her.

However, if the person taking credit for my ideas was my boss, I would tread cautiously. To some extent, I believe that my job is to make my superiors shine. If I were being rewarded for my ideas with raises and promotions, I would be happy.

I consider myself ambitious, but I’m also practical. As long as I am continuing to learn and grow within my position, I’ll be a happy camper. Different companies promote people at different rates, and I’m pretty confident that working for you will keep me motivated and mentally stimulated for several years to come.

☛ What kind of financial reports does upper management need and why?

☛ What methods/metrics do you use to evaluate the organization’s progress?

☛ What are key elements to look at when evaluating the company’s investments?

☛ Is a cash flow statement enough to tell whether a company is doing well?

☛ How do you calculate and interpret ROI?

☛ What’s your experience with benchmarking studies?

☛ Are you familiar with Oracle?

☛ How do you reward innovation, initiative, teamwork?

☛ Imagine upper management asks you to tell them whether the company should continue offering a product/service. How would you go about it?

☛ When you have to deal with multiple priorities, how do you manage?

☛ If one of your subordinates made an error, how would you handle it?

☛ Imagine there’s a conflict between two accountants you supervise. How do you resolve it?

☛ If we bought new equipment, how would the financial statements change?

☛ How would you help staff change from a “this is how it’s always done” approach to new processes you implement?

I would search for new markets for the product while I spurred the engineers to change the product to make it more marketable to its original core audience.

I am extremely impatient. I expect my employees to prove themselves on the very first assignment. If they fail, my tendency is to stop delegating to them and start doing everything myself.

To compensate for my own weakness, however, I have started to really prep my people on exactly what will be expected of them.

It’s important to understand whether your finance candidate’s career path is aligned with the position to which they are applying. Bringing on a candidate who’s just looking for a “here and now” type of position won’t do you any favors in terms of a long-term hire. Watch out for cookie cutter answers that end up sounding more like wishful thinking than actual long-term plans.

I believe that a company needs both A and B players. When you’re pitching new business, you want the A players on the front line. But behind the A players, you need the B players who can hammer out the details of the projects and stick with them on a day-to-day basis. Having too many A players on the team leads to ego clashes and a disorganized, anarchical way of doing business.

Your ability to identify key issues and detect problems from relevant information is key in your answer. Your skill in breaking down, organizing and analyzing information is under the spotlight with this interview question.

I’m sensitive to internal politics and respect authority figures. But I also do my best to never become embroiled in office politics. At my level, I consider this to be a wise course of action. I like people and can pretty much work with anyone. So I concentrate on doing my job, listening to directions, surpassing expectations, and leaving the internal political battles to the politicians.

As a career-changer, I believe that I’m a better employee because I’ve gained a lot of diverse skills from moving around. These skills help me solve problems creatively.