Business Analyst Interview Questions and Answers | Business Analyst Interview Preparation

[Music] do you want to start your career as a business analyst are you not ready for the questions asked in the business analyst interview are you worried about what topics you must be prepared for if yes then this video is for you when getting interviewed for the ba position it is better to prepare answers to all the questions the more familiar you are with what questions you might be asked the better your chances of clearing the interview in this particular video i will be helping you by telling you the top 50 questions you may be asked in the interview to make you understand in a better way i have divided the questions into three sections based on the category that is basic business analyst interview questions technical business analyst interview questions role specific business analyst interview questions now let's start the video by discussing some of the basic questions who is a business analyst this is a fundamental question that would be asked in a ba interview this can be answered with your definition just brief about what you know about a business analyst for example business analysts are there to bridge the gap between the stakeholders and the i t department they are a crucial part of any organization business analysts work inside a company to access current systems and create plans for the future like other departments they have equal contribution to the growth of the company they track the business needs and take necessary actions to it they are responsible for figuring out the problems and then formulate appropriate solutions they help in understanding the management of the organization technical systems etc what are the roles of a business analyst hr asks this to know how much you are aware of the business analyst roles you can explain as mentioned below the role of a ba is quite different the most important role of the business analyst is to upgrade efficiency through their strategies some of the other roles include improving and optimizing current systems creating innovative systems to support the company's strategies designing the method to formulate the solutions collaborating with stakeholders communicating with various departments what are the key responsibilities of a business analyst well it is necessary to be aware of the va responsibilities before you sit in an interview one can answer this question in the following terms a business analyst role may vary from company to company but some of the responsibilities never change few of them are understand the problems of the company analyze the requirements of the company drive changes in the company support principally through implementing i t and technological solutions facilitate collaboration with the stakeholders what do you think are the key skills of a business analyst there are several skills required to become a business analyst one must have a clear picture of all the skills in general you can answer there is a combination of skills like soft hard and technical skills some of the essential skills expected from any business analyst would be good communication skills analytical skills collaborating with others in the company leadership qualities decision making skills creative thinking ability what are the key differences between business analysis and business analytics in the business world the terms business analytics and business analysis sound similar the primary difference between the two processes is that business analysis is more related to functions and processes it depends on its architecture stream such as process architecture and enterprise architecture whereas business analytics is usually dependent on data and reporting it involves skills technologies past performance investigation and information search what tools do you consider as the most important for a business analyst this is one of the important questions which most of the interviewers ask to name the same of the tools you are working with also brief about how it has made our work easy this creates an impression on the interviewer any business analyst must be knowing about the tools the commonly used tools are google docs sql adobe trello balsamic microsoft office suite jira rike python etc what is the difference between a business analyst and a data analyst here mention some differences between them like the main objective of a business analyst includes analyzing and deriving relevant solutions from data to meet business requirements on the other hand data analysts indulge themselves in providing competitive analysis or in identifying business or marketing trends the responsibilities of a business analyst depend on industry standards whereas data analysts help companies by analyzing data and using it to perform proper actions to present value to the business stakeholders business analysts are involved in defining goals requirements for the project but the approach of a data analyst is more predictive and perspective business analysts must be experts in business analysis tools techniques etc am data analysts must be perfect in maths statistics prediction analysis etc why is excellent communication skill required for a business analyst va is that person who is required to talk with many people and convinces opinion he is essential to speak with stakeholders clients people of various departments etc hence excellent communication skills are required what are the basic strengths of a business analyst this is just a general question to know your thoughts about the designation you are applied for answer in the following way well a business analyst indulges himself in every part of the company he is responsible for looking after each part of the organization the main strengths of a business analyst may include ability to solve problems critical thinking great communication analytical knowledge what are the steps involved in the business analysis process flow to clearly understand your business analysis knowledge this question will be asked just mention the main steps in the process the process flow of business analysis is quite simple the process includes fewer steps such as information gathering to discover business objectives defining the scope business analysis plan define detailed requirements implementation access the value created by the project what is business process modeling this question is asked to check your business abilities to define the business process modeling you can explain as business process modeling is one of the graphical representations of either a company's business processes or workflows it maps from the present state of the process that is it is and to be the future state without making any changes or improvements graphing methods such as the flowchart data flow diagram etcetera are used here what is benchmarking just define the term benchmarking is a process of measuring one's company's success against other companies to find the gap in performance between the two in this fast running market we must measure various factors such as rules performances policies rating etc what techniques do you consider the most important for a business analyst to analyze your business needs goals or objectives techniques used by the business analyst are asked mention some of the techniques you know some of the popular techniques are most analysis peso analysis the five ways catwoe analysis moscow swot analysis business process model brainstorming mind mapping etc what is business validation business validation is the process of verifying a set of end-to-end business processes function it helps gather all the information needed to determine whether investing large amounts is worth time and resources what is a gap analysis what are the different types of gap analysis a gap analysis is a method that assesses the differences in performance between business information systems or software applications it also determines the best way to reach the goals it then compares the current state with an ideal state or goals that highlight opportunities there are mainly five types of gaps performance gap product gap profit gap manpower gap systematic review gap now that you got an idea of some of these basic questions we shall focus on some of the technical questions that would be asked in your next interview do you think that every business analyst should have technical knowledge the business analyst has to deal with many tools and techniques he also needs to access many technologies a business analyst must have a conceptual technical understanding as it helps analyze the problem to be solved and communicate with technical stakeholders hence having technical knowledge is a must for any business analyst what are the diagrams any ba must know mention a few diagrams a ba will use some diagrams are activity diagrams use case diagrams class diagrams collaboration diagrams data flow diagrams what is uml uml is unified modeling language which is a standard language to specify visualize construct and document the software and non-software systems how does catwoe help in business analysis the term catwoe stands for customers actors transformation process worldview owners and environmental constraints it helps in making decisions list the documents that are used by a ba in a project this question is specifically asked to check your skills when one becomes a business analyst he will be required to deal with various documents some of them are functional specification document technical specification document business requirement document what is a flow chart why is it important a flow chart makes the representation easier it shows the complete flow of the system through symbols and diagrams it is important as it makes the system easy to understand for developers as well as non-technical stakeholders what does bpmn stand for name the five basic elements in bpmn bpmn stands for business process model and notation it is a graphical representation of business processes the five basic elements are flow objects data connecting objects swim lanes artifacts what are your sql skills the hiring manager is testing your technical background you can answer in terms of technical capabilities sql is one of the crucial aspects with writing basic queries i have used advanced techniques in extracting and manipulating the data now i am familiar with sql parameters like conditional operators aggregate functions self-joins cross-joins other techniques etc what is the k-no analysis here hr is analyzing your techniques do define it know analysis is a technique used to identify the end user requirements for the new products it mainly deals with the needs of the end users it is a method to identify the basic needs of customers performance and excitement requirements of the users can be checked what are the attributes of the kano analysis the attributes of this kano analysis are found to be threshold attributes performance attributes excitement attributes what are the primary competencies of a ba mention some competencies you know the core competencies are business and industry knowledge soft and problem solving skills business process management decision making analytical thinking technical skills what is information gathering to understand your business analysis process this question would be asked information gathering is one of the steps in the business analysis process this is the initial step where you lay the groundwork for your project including collecting some information about the project you are working on clarifying the scope requirements and business objectives what is a use case which are the two documents that are related to a use case a use case is a vital part of software modeling it is a description of how a person uses that process or system to reach his goal it is a graphical representation of a system that clearly describes how someone can use the system the two documents are frd functional requirement document sdd system design document what is srs what are the critical elements of an srs document an srs is an acronym for system or software requirement specifications it is a document that explains the various features of a software application srs has a high level abstraction of a system the key elements of an srs document are function requirements non-functional requirements scope of work what do you know about sdd in this question explain about system design documents sdd is an intermediate step between the business users and business developers it helps the developers understanding the business requirements what would be the basic needs of a business analyst to complete their work a business analyst basic requirements are case scenarios access to logical models data flow diagrams work instructions necessary documents what does invesd stand for inv esd is an acronym for independent negotiable valuable estimable adequately sized and testable it defines the ability of a problem what is the pew matrix pew matrix is a criteria-based decision matrix that will help decide the most suitable and alternate solutions it is also known as the design matrix or problem it allows the analyst to organize various criteria in a structured way for easy comparison facilitates a team-based process for concept generation and selection allows the analyst to develop an optimal solution which is a hybrid of other robust solutions what is sdlc sdlc means software development lifecycle which can also be termed a system development life cycle or application development lifecycle it describes the process of planning creating testing and deploying the data what are the different software methodologies used by the business analysts mention some of the software methodologies you have worked on the different software methodologies are sdlc six sigma swot gap analysis risk analysis say cmm etc what are the problem-solving skills of a business analyst a business analyst's key skill is problem solving some of them are leadership skill illicit information and resolving identifying associations solution proposal problem analysis skill technical knowledge domain knowledge what does jad stand for how is it used by business analysts jad stands for joint application development jad is a process of collecting business requirements with developing new information systems for an organization it also includes approaches for improving user participation expediting development and the quality of specifications define etl in terms of business analysts etl means extraction transformation and load a business analyst uses this technique to take the data from one database and put it into the other database define personas personas are user-centered design methodologies it helps the developers and the methodological department by explaining to them the user behavior in different criteria it represents detailed profiles of fictional characters with a specific segment of users to enable an application capable of performing on a demographic area analysts create personas that reflect the target audience for a website intranet or application let's now discuss role specific business analyst questions hiring managers may ask the following questions during a business analyst interview to validate your role-related or scenario-based knowledge in different criteria how a business analyst plays a vital role in the initial stages of the project you can answer this question in the following way responsible for gathering all the data required identify the missing parts document all the business requirements implement the action to deliver the plan actively participate in each part of the implementation why is a business analyst position important in any organization you can mention some of the points like this position plays a critical role in deciphering the future for many businesses this designation is vital because a ba job cannot be automated they are responsible for the growth of the company and in increasing the organizational standards they act as a framework for designing the solutions they help in the smooth running of the company how do you handle changes to requirements your logical thinking skill is being tested with this question as you answer highlight how you will respond to changing situations business analysts maintain complete audit records the change log must be updated whenever a new request pops up the change requests are assessed and analyzed the senior analysts monitor each request demonstrate the change requested to the change control board ccb provide necessary solutions for the change requests document the requests implement the changes ensure that the implemented solution has occurred effectively how have you handled difficult stakeholders in this particular question the hiring manager is trying to check your communication and collaboration abilities do explain about any situation you have undergone in your previous experience if not tell them how well you can plan to handle the stakeholders in different situations like understand stakeholders completely by having a clear picture of the projects and details of each phase updating details to the stakeholders on every point communicate with stakeholders to understand their vision communicate with project managers and understand the project completely to make sure that each demand of a stakeholder is implemented effectively what are the qualities required to become an agile ba business analysts have a role in agile organizations also the qualities of an agile ba are leadership qualities identify the risks problem solving skills analytical thinking ability communication and collaboration flexibility and adaptability knowing existing technologies deliver effective requirements what makes you unique from others here they are testing your experience skills and individuality you can answer like i have a core business background i have the ability to use my knowledge to improve the organization i can manage a huge number of people at the same time what are the significant problems that a business analyst can face in the present time in this present business where more and more challenges are found their problems are also increased some of them are maintaining the gap between a customer and an organization marketing advertisements and campaigns reaching their required outcomes finding the target audience provide quality work do you think a business analyst should be involved in testing if yes which all are different types of testing a business analyst is a multitasker he must be aware of each corner of the department and therefore he must know about each part of the company he should be involved in testing because he knows the overall system requirements and difficulties hence any issues will be corrected and resolved quickly by business analysts some of the streams of business analyst works but are not limited to user acceptance testing system testing security testing integration testing unit testing regression testing what is the requirement elicitation mention some of the techniques used requirement elicitation is a technique to gather information from stakeholders and users it involves particular approaches or strategies for collaborating with users directly some requirement elicitation techniques are document analysis interviews prototyping brainstorming workshops surveys define analytical reporting a business analyst is required to comprehend the significance and drawbacks of analytical reporting and one must be ready with a suitable answer during your business analyst interview start your answer with a brief introduction of analytical reporting like it is a type of business reporting that offers data analysis information and recommendations the recommendations are the critical attributes that will make it different from informational reporting while answering focus on how you created recommendations from data sources and showcase your analytical skills in simple terms answer in the following way an analytical report one of the business reports that is both qualitative and quantitative company data to analyze and evaluate business strategies and processes it evaluates business decisions based on data obtained it is based on historical data and statistics it gives a predictive analysis these reports include data is and recommendations how do you see your future as a business analyst tell them about your aims and brief them about your future like i always wanted a career as a business analyst as this is a flexible job that teaches me to work with different stakeholders and people growing with the organization's success as a more prominent and influential analyst was always been my dream i also urge to certify myself with higher certifications in the future every organization tries to hire a professional who has excellent values and knowledge hence be sure of your ability before sitting in an interview be comfortable and explain your experience and highlight your knowledge in addition to preparing the above questions prepare a great business analyst resume that makes you unique along with that having a business analyst certification also will be a plus point now is a prudent time for those wishing to make a switch to the business analysis profession and invensis learning can help you get started at invensis learning we provide certification training courses for business analysis foundation and practitioner qualifications enroll now with invensys learning to learn from the best in the industry and become a certified business analysis professional for more updates on trending technologies subscribe to invensys learning youtube channel also if you have any queries share them with us in the comments section

Channel: Invensis Learning

Views: 67,807

Rating: 4.954071 out of 5

Keywords: business analyst interview questions and answers, business analyst interview, business analyst interview questions, how to crack business analyst interview, business analyst interview preparation, business analyst, business analyst jobs, business analyst training, business analyst certification, business analyst training invensis learning, invensis learning

Id: H7gQTe_GyS4

Length: 22min 21sec (1341 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 29 2020