Describe a time when you had a number of conflicting demands on your time and how you dealt with this

Interview Question: Describe a time where you had a number of conflicting demands on your time and how you dealt with this.

This interview question is reflective of the situation in which many employees find themselves as a result of the present financial turmoil. With increasing workloads, rising targets and deadlines to meet, interviewers want to be sure that interview candidates can manage this type of situation.

As a graduate, examples you could use would be writing your dissertation during the end of your studies with upcoming exams or even the job search, application and interview process itself, which can be very demanding.

Even more pertinent examples would be periods of work experience or extracurricular activities, such as organising an event; fund raising; organising a trip abroad, or any experience which has a number of variables over which you have no control.

Think about how you prioritised your time, what actions you took, what you delegated, what support you sought, what feedback you got and the outcome you achieved. Also think about what you learned from the experience and what would have happened if you had got things wrong. Contingency planning is key to survival in business when situations are constantly changing.

Tell me about your previous employment

Interview Question: Tell me about your previous employment

Interviewers expect candidates to be able to explain and discuss their work history in detail at interview. Be prepared to discuss the companies you worked for (and their competitors), the rough dates you started and finished at each employer, how much you earned and what your job entailed.

Most importantly, you should be able to explain in detail:

• Why you wanted to work for each employer
• Why you wanted experience in each industry (if you have worked in various industries)
• What you gained from each role (e.g. experience, skills, qualifications, personal development, financing for a Gap Year or travelling, etc)
• Why you think your previous roles are useful for the role you are now applying for (i.e. what transferable skills have you picked up that you can offer the new employer)
• Why you left your previous employers (never give a negative reason)

It is always a good idea to refresh yourself with your work experience before interview. It is important to be able to answer questions immediately, and not to waste to thinking back and working our old salaries or start dates.

Be Positive

You must sound confident and enthusiastic when referring to your old employers. Even if you did not enjoy certain jobs or industries do not mention this at interview. You must be positive, and should aim to talk about what you learnt and how you improved in each period of employment.

Never refer to disliking old bosses or managers and never reveal if you left a company or industry because you did not like it - this only reflects badly on you and your decision making process.

CV

It may be useful to take a copy of your CV with you to interviews, so that you have all your work experience information available to you. Having your CV with you means that even under pressure, you will be able to remember key facts about your work history, and will also have exactly the same information to hand as your interviewer.

If you do decide to take your CV with you to an interview, carry it in a black, leather, A4 size document wallet.

For further information on common interview questions ask in the WikiJob forum.

Tell me about yourself

Interview Question: Tell Me About Yourself

If you are asked this question at interview it is important to remember what your interviewer will be looking for in candidates for the job in question. It would be easy to start talking about your favourite hobbies and interests, but bear in mind that talking about more relevant activities may be beneficial.

Be prepared to ask your interviewer to define the information they are looking for by asking: “What would you like to know about me?” This gives your interviewer the chance to get you to tell them exactly what information he or she is looking for.

Your interviewer will probably be most interested in information involving your job. If you can, see if you can build into your response positives which relate to the job you are applying for.

What do you think you will be doing in your first year as an auditor?

It is always essential for you to be able to comprehensively explain exactly what you will be doing in the job position you have applied for. If you do not know what you will be doing, or are not able to explain what you will be doing, you are not employable. Employers will only hire people who understand exactly what a company does, exactly what they will be doing day to day and are able to explain exactly why they want to do this job. If you have no knowledge of what you will be doing, you appear weak, incompetent and unemployable.

Interview Question: What do you think you will be doing in your first year as an auditor?

In your first year as an auditor your time will be split between working and studying. You may also travel frequently and may decide to become involved in extracurricular activities organised by your employer, such as sports teams and CSR operations.

Working

Your work as a first year trainee will mainly involve "ticking and bashing", a term used to describe the mundane work that is an essential part of accountancy, but general fairly tiresome and long-winded. This work is generally undesirable, and is consequently mainly given out to new trainees.

Your work may involve checking invoices, checking reports, making sure two or more documents agree and other report and analysis based tasks. You may have to audit financial statements, verify the accuracy of data by checking other people's accuracy, completeness and consistency, and generally ensure that all records are a true and fair reflection of a business's performance.

You may also have to test controls to help a company mitigate against risks, check for compliance with IRFS and Sox 404 and chase up clients to find out about missing information or find out why there are inconsistencies, when they occur.

Chasing up clients can be monotonous and usually involves making many phone calls and sending follow-up emails.

You may also be asked to find specific documents or reports, check documents for spelling and grammar and to conduct miscellaneous office administration tasks.

During your first year/s you will also learn how to complete the simpler sections of an audit file and may even be given the opportunity to be solely responsible for a small audit (like a subsidiary or pension scheme) by the end of the year, among many other tasks. A lot will depend on the firm you work. Smaller firms often allow trainees to tak on more responsibility earlier than large firms.

Don't underestimate the importance at interview of demonstrating an understanding of the ticking and bashing side - a partner is likely to be impressed if you're aware of the not so interesting side to the job and can still display enthusiasm!

Point of note: At interview, do not underestimate the importance of demonstrating an understanding of the ticking and bashing side of your work as a first year trainee. A partner is likely to be impressed with you if you can still display enthusiasm for the job, even if you are aware of the less interesting side to the job.

Studying

First year accountancy trainees will usually study towards the ACA, ACCA, CIMA or other similar accountancy qualifications. Trainees may receive some training in-house (from managers at their company) although most training is usually delivered by a third party academic institution. Generally speaking, before exams or during heavy periods of study, accountancy practices will provide trainees with some time off to revise.

Travel

During your first years as an auditor it is likely you will spend some time travelling, either for meetings at client offices, or for extended periods of work at client offices.

Extracurricular Activities

Many employers, and in particular large graduate employers such as the Big 4 organise extracurricular groups, such as drama groups and sports groups. Employers like to hire "all-rounders" so it is worth discussing how you would like to get involved with more than just work during your time as a trainee. Employers are always keen to involve first year trainees in their graduate recruitment activities (such as attending careers fairs, internship mentoring, and conducting office tours for candidates during assessment days). Explaining you would like to be involved with this type of activity is also worth mentioning.

Corporate Social Responsibility

Many firms organise Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities, such as helping local charities at weekends. Employers like employees to get involved with these types of activities as much as possible because it reflects well on the firm as a whole so it is well worth mentioning how much you would like to get involved with CSR when you join a firm.

Why do you want to work for a small firm

Interview question: Why do you want to work for a small firm?

Although graduate schemes are becoming increasingly popular with graduates, starting your career at a good small or medium sized firm also offers a great starting ground for a career in any industry.

Promotion

Whilst big city employers' run graduate programmes with clear-cut rules for promotion (usually offered after several years), small companies (who are free from such binding structures) just promote people who do well. If you are successful in a small firm, you are likely to be rewarded much faster than at larger firms.

Working for a small firm

People at smaller companies may make less money and enjoy fewer perks than their big city counterparts, but they are much more likely than big-company employees to describe themselves as "extremely satisfied" with their jobs. One advantage in small firms is the increased recognition from managers, and the increased team spirit that is often not part of working life at large companies.

Smaller firms tend to be more supportive, less bureaucratic and more willing to hire workers embarking on new careers. If you are the kind of person who has ideas and can come up with new ways of doing things, it is much more likely that a small company will listen to you and take your ideas on board. At a large company, just finding out who to suggest ideas to can be a hassle, let alone scheduling a meeting to talk about them.

In small companies, people know about each other much more intimately. Whilst this means that news of a work-based romance may spread across your office within a few hours, it also means that your hard work and good ideas are likely to receive the recognition they deserve. Work particularly hard or have a fantastic idea in a small company and the owner is likely to find out about it by the end of the week. In a large company, you might never even meet the owner or any senior staff at all.

Camaraderie

Small enterprises tend to foster camaraderie and family-like atmospheres. Most small outfits are privately held, which means there are no shareholders to answer to. Being private therefore, allows actions to take place much quicker than at large firms.

Recruitment Processes at large firms

Large companies have highly structured recruitment processes that streamline applications and reject irregular applicants. If you are coming from an unusual background, you will find it hard to get interviews at large companies, but small ones recruit with a different criteria. Small companies tend to get a great deal fewer applications and spend much longer analysing each application.

Small companies place less emphasis on formal requirements like previous title and industry experience and instead chose people they think can do the job.

Perks

Top level companies offer perks that smaller companies just can't hope to compete with, such as cars, equipment and company sponsored MBAs, but much of this is just face value. A talented individual can often progress to the top much faster in a small organisation, and consequently take home a much higher pay cheque than those at larger firms within a few years.

Conversely, working at a large firm will almost certainly give you experience in A-list business dealing with top level clients, which is very different from SME (Small and Medium Enterprise) business.

Small businesses are better suited to all-rounders

As with most small businesses, employees are less specialised, with work duties extending beyond what their education may reveal. In a small business, there is more room for growth and creativity. You can start in one area of business, but may be able to transfer quite easily into another if it turns out you have a particular skill or preference for this type of work.

Although big name firms do give your resume weight, working for a small firm will give you a more diverse job experience with increased responsibilities that may turn out to impress employers more than a company name. Furthermore, if you plan to start your own company, there is no better experience than working for a small-size firm to learn the basics of what you will need to do.

Mentoring & Career Development

The general mentoring experiences among small businesses are usually quite different than those available at big name firms. Graduates that have lively enquiring minds and are genuinely interested in the industry they are working in will find that managers and bosses (even owners) have much more time to talk to you than employees at major firms.

The amount of information and quality of education available at small companies is literally yours for the taking. Furthermore, when asking for references after a job move, the chances are much higher in a small company that the reference will be accurate, and quite possibly that it will come from the boss, or a much higher manager than at a large company (where it will probably come from the HR team).