It’s happening! You’re finally invited to interview for that accounting role you’ve been searching for. You’re not sure what to expect, but you know you want to put your best foot forward by getting prepared and knocking this interview out of the park.
You can start by reviewing the most common interview questions. But don’t stop there—you should also make sure to be ready for some more accounting-specific interview questions.
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How do I know? Some might call me a “recovering CPA”—I used to work as one at a Big Four accounting firm. And before becoming a career coach, I spent years handling recruiting efforts at a public accounting firm for five offices spanning up and down the East Coast. I worked directly with leadership to identify top talent, built recruiting processes, and screened candidates for accounting opportunities. Based on my experience, I have some advice on how to answer the most common accountant interview questions and what qualities recruiters are looking for when they ask them.
Use STAR to Nail Behavioural Interviews
The STAR method is a technique used to structure your answers to behavioural questions, helping you to remain focused and provide complete and concise descriptions that an interviewer understands with ease. Make the interviewerâs job easier, and you make the decision to hire you easier. STAR is an acronym for:
Hereâs how a candidate for an accountancy job might tackle the question, âTell me about a project you led that transformed financial performance.â
Situation
Begin by providing the context of the situation. Describe the background needed for the remainder of the story to make sense, as you relate the problem you faced:
Five final tips to polish your behavioural interview performance
These five final tips will help you ace the behavioural questions interview using the STAR interview technique:
You can use these questions as a reference to determine your own accounting interview strategy. Applicants that answer these types of questions well are the ones that are most likely to respond to similar situations well while at your company. Recruitment involves asking questions that help you determine how someone will do at the job. The best way to do that is by asking about real situations, and these behavioural interview questions will help you make that determination.
Almost every company needs an accountant or bookkeeper to help them manage their finances. Every single dollar that goes in and out of your company has to be correctly accounted for, in order to make business decisions, determine revenue, file taxes, and more. But doing so requires the right type of accountant. Given how important your financial details are to your success, it is important to find the very best accountants – and the ones that are going to successfully thrive in your company. Behavioural Interview Questions for Accountants More and more companies are using behavioural interview questions as a way to determine who is prepared for the job. These questions ask for real life scenarios to see how the person handled them, and they force people to think back to experiences they are unlikely to have prepared for so that the interview is more genuine. For those that need help finding behavioural interview questions for accountants, consider the following: