Associate Finance Executive Interview Preparation Guide

Maybe in about twenty years, but by then, I suspect you'll be running the entire company and will need a good, loyal lieutenant to help you manage this department!

ABC is a great company, and thanks in part to my team's contributions, they are doing very well these days. But that wasn't always the case.

During the first two years that I worked there, people were being fired left and right, and just hanging onto my job was a feat.

Once the company began to turn around, [my boss] was offered a terrific job at a rival organization and it took ABC six months to replace him, and when they did, the new boss was eager to bring in his own people. Once again, I tenaciously hung on to my job, and, even though I was long overdue for a promotion, I really didn't think that the timing was right for me to broach it. No one from the old staff was there to even vouch for my performance!

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.

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.

Start with net income, go line by line through major adjustments (depreciation, changes in working capital and deferred taxes) to arrive at cash flows from operating activities.

☛ Mention capital expenditures, asset sales, purchase of intangible assets, and purchase/sale of investment securities to arrive at cash flow from investing activities.
☛ Mention repurchase/issuance of debt and equity and paying out dividends to arrive at cash flow from financing activities.
☛ Adding cash flows from operations, cash flows from investments, and cash flows from financing gets you to total change of cash.
☛ Beginning-of-period cash balance plus change in cash allows you to arrive at end-of-period cash balance.

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.

Working capital is defined as current assets minus current liabilities; it tells the financial statement user how much cash is tied up in the business through items such as receivables and inventories and also how much cash is going to be needed to pay off short term obligations in the next 12 months.

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.

Capital expenditures are capitalized because of the timing of their estimated benefits - the lemonade stand will benefit the firm for many years. The employees' work, on the other hand, benefits the period in which the wages are generated only and should be expensed then. This is what differentiates an asset from an expense.

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.