7 Tips to NAIL Your Accounting Job Interview!

hey guys in this video I want to cover the seven tips that if you follow in your next accounting job interview you'll be sure to nail down that interview and get the job of your dreams so stick around we'll be covering things such as the role the company being your professional self covering why accounting and planning some stories and asking good questions I guarantee you if you understand these tips on a deep level there is no way you won't nail down that next accounting job interview [Music] if you do to this channel my name is Bill Hannah and I'm the Financial Controller I put out videos every week to help you grow your career and nail down accounting job interviews so if you think that this kind of content will help you hit that subscribe button so that you don't miss any of my videos okay so tip number one is arriving early why do we say arrive early as opposed to arrive on time the reason why we say to arrive early as opposed to arriving on time is that if you plan to arrive on time that doesn't factor for events that may delay you such as train cancellation or any transportation and disruption your car might break down any of these things might delay you so it's better to plan to arrive early so if you're arriving like 15 minutes early that's the right way to go arriving on time this is you know that will stress you out or put you in a situation that you might be arriving late so tip number one is to plan to arrive early tip number two is understanding the role so my advice here is that you look at the job description and go bullet by bullet and make sure you understand what every bullet is saying you need to be sure that you can address each of these bullet points on your job interview and better yet you need to be able to draw some connections between these bullet points on the job description and your history whether your job history or the work you've done in school or anything that might substantiate why you think you can perform these job duties so tip number two is to understand the role you need to walk into that job interview confident that you know what the job description entails and that you understand how to perform the job if any of the bullet points on that job description is something that you haven't done in the past you have now some time to research the online maybe take an online course try to understand it a bit more so that you can speak to it do job interview so this is my tip number two understanding the role tip number three is to learn about the company itself the easiest thing for you to do is to google the name of the company and find any relevant websites or news article that can talk about the company the second thing you can do there is just to go on the company's website and look at its product page and understand what they're selling you know whether it's a product or service understand how the product or service fits in you know either in your daily life or someone you might know so you can draw some connections between what the company does and between the services and products that you see around you every day and finally another great resource when you're researching the company you'll be working for is a website called CrunchBase now not every company is listed on CrunchBase and if the company is really small and have no history of fundraising it might not be on there but take a look and you might find it and if it's on there you can find things such as the employee headcount you can see things such as the history of fundraising as well as information on the founders of the company and the key employees as well so tip number three research the company go on its website google its name find any relevant news article about it and go on crunchbase and find some information there as well tip number four is to be your professional self now we all heard the advice that says you should be yourself during a job interview and I'm all for that I think you should hundred percent be yourself but my advice is to add a bit of professionalism to being your normal self let me give you an example to illustrate this point if someone asks me why did I choose accounting as a career well if I'm sitting in a friendly setting I might say something like well you know accounting is the language of business and since you know I have a passion for business then that's why I wanted to study accounting and that might help me succeed in business now let me give you the version of my answer that I would give during a an accounting job interview which would be the same answer but I'll add a little bit of Polish a little bit of professional feel to it so that I may seem like someone that you'd want to work with the question again was why did I choose accounting as a career well because I think that accounting is the language of business because I have a passion for business and finances I knew that going into accounting will give me the foundation to succeed in business notice the difference there's a big difference between my body language I use my hands a little bit less I kept a constant eye contact I kept my answer concise and short and to the point I removed any expressions such as you know and looking around and looking down and so this is the kind of thing you want to do you want to be able to be yourself but you want to be your professional self so this would be my tip number four is being your professional self another easy way to be in your professional self by the way is to think of someone that you know that you actually look up to think of the way that they speak and try to emulate them - during the job interview don't try to copy them in every way but all I'm saying is that be yourself and add a little bit of professionalism to the way you speak and an easy way to do that is to emulate somebody that you like the way they speak and you think they are professional tip number five is to be able to cover the question why you chose accounting as a career a lot of interviewers like this question because it allows you to speak to the reasons why he chose accounting as a career and it allows you to speak a bit about yourself now there's a quite a few ways to answer this question of why you know I chose accounting as a career you know I talked about it a little bit earlier where I chose accounting because accounting is the language of business and because I have a passion for business and finances I chose accounting because if we give me a good foundation to Succeed in Business so this is one way to answer it I want you to think about it maybe change it a little bit maybe come up with your own spin but it's really important before you walk into that job interview is to understand why you chose accounting as a career because most likely that will come up as a question tip number six planning stories the reason why this is super important is because interviewers most often will ask you a question such as give me an example from your history where you had to resolve a conflict or how you dealt with conflict they might also ask you a question such as give me an example of how your remain calm under pressure and so it's really important before you walk into the job interview is to plan a of stories in your head now my advice to you is not to make up any stories if you make up a story then it's easy for you to during the interview to be caught in a lie so sick of stories that actually happened and things that put you in a positive light such as you know studying for an exam and you know getting a good grade you know being calm and you know having a deadline for submitting a paper or submitting a project and how you were able to ace it and submit it on time and if there are obstacles along the way maybe there are some reports you needed from other team members that you had to actually go after and get you know things of that nature everybody has these things in their history you just need to think hard and deep you'll find examples of things you've done in the past they'll put you in the best light so plan these stories before the interview you know nail them down in your head so reading and talk to them during an interview don't rehearse them don't try to memorize the wording it's better to have it just a fluid conversation if you are a hearse you're you will sound robotic which is not good so my advice is that you just like sinks through them remember them and then have a conversation during the interview about them so this would be my tip number six which which is planning stories tip number seven is asking good questions and this is you know comes up during the end of the interview usually the interviewer would give you some space to ask your own questions about the company and so it's important that these questions are not you know an interrogation style questions like don't ask some questions like you know how many customers do you have or how much revenue that the company make this may sound like an interrogation try to make your question sounds more strategic and so this is where my tip number three comes into play which is research in the company so remember in tip number three we said you'll be researching the company looking in Google looking at the company's website looking at websites like crunch Bay's and so here you can plan some questions here are some examples of good questions you can ask during the job interview your questions should be more strategic more thoughtful so you can ask things like you know how does the company plan to grow in the next five years what are the strategic ways that the company is planning to acquire you know new users in a few what are the product enhancement that the company is planning so that it will differentiate itself of the competition and so you see where I'm going with this these questions are strategic thoughtful you're not asking you know specific things about like how many customers do you have or how much revenue do you make you want to make your questions more high-level and more strategic and not super specific so there you go guys these are my seven tips to acing or nailing down your next accounting job interview and summary they are arriving early not arriving on time number two is understanding the role making sure you know what the Job Description is saying number three researching the company google it go on its website and look at CrunchBase number four is being a professional self which means you should be yourself but add a little bit of professionalism to it five is covering the question of why you chose accounting as a career tip number six is to plan some stories and these are stories around the remaining remaining calm under pressure resolving conflict and you know think about these stories before the interview you know walk through them in your head and kind of like speak to them during the interview number seven is asking good questions and like we said good questions are more strategic and high level and not very specific questions such as like how many customers you have or how much revenue do you have you want to be asking questions such as where as the company headed you know what is the next area of growth or what is the next exciting product that you have this is it for this video if you liked it please hit the like button if you know someone who might benefit from the content if you know someone who's going to a job interview soon please share this video with them and if you haven't already subscribed to my channel so that you don't miss out on any of the content that I publish weekly and see you the next one [Music]

Channel: The Financial Controller

Views: 84,779

Keywords: Accounting Jobs, Accounting Interview, Prepare for Accounting Interview, Accounting, Finance Interview, Interview Prepare

Id: aAYKRz-cWcM

Length: 11min 10sec (670 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 13 2020