Financial Controller Interview Questions

Financial Controller Interview Questions:

The main responsibility of the Financial Controller work position is ensuring the long-term financial richness of a company. For instance, establishing budgets, managing and regulating business money and accounts, forecasting, and developing internal control policies and processes are all part of this process. The majority of financial controllers have completed a Master’s degree in accounting or business administration. Furthermore, a lot of them are certified public accountants (CPAs) or certified management accountants (CMAs), which makes them qualified to respond back to your toughest accounting questions.

Leadership skills are extremely important for this position. Your prospective candidate should have a strong experience of hiring and developing skills. This is important because it is rare to find skilled talent for finance positions. Furthermore, they should also have strong presentation and negotiation skills. Additionally, they should be communicative to be able to convey all types of financial information to non-finance employees, specifically the management team. Therefore, your interview questions for prospective candidates can include both quantitative and qualitative skill sets.

The below finance controller interview questions are designed to help you establish a purposeful interview space where you can have an open-minded conversation with your prospective candidates. Ask yourself these questions; are they gifted with strategic planning? Are they able to clearly articulate their thoughts and logic? Are they capable and patient to coach and motivate their colleagues? Have they come prepared to the interview, in terms of completing their research about the position, the company and the industry? These should be the points of focus when you create the list of questions you would like to ask your prospective candidates.

Operational and Situational questions:

• What are the most crucial aspects to consider while creating and developing a budget?
• What has been your most difficult financial project to date?
• Tell us about a time where you identified a financial potential for your company.
• What are some of the methods you have taken to reduce your previous companies’ expenses?
• What is your perspective on the financial strengths and weaknesses of our industry?
• What are some of the contributions your leadership made to the success of your current/previous team?
• Tell us about your techniques and methods in increasing revenues for the previous companies you have worked for.
• Tell us about a time when you helped improve the quality of financial information or the productivity of communicating financial information. 
• What types of reports or presentations have you created and developed for your executive teams?
• What is your experience in setting up accounting/financial reporting controls? Give us an example in which you thoroughly explain a control you were able to design and implement. 
• Which kind of accounting/financial reporting software you are able to work with.
• What are the methods you follow when hiring new financial staff?
• What kind of support and help you offered to junior financial staff to help them grow in their career?
• Tell us about a time where you had to motivate your team to hand in a complex project within a tight deadline.
• What are the techniques you follow to monitor and evaluate the performance of your team?
• Remember a time where you had to convince an executive team to take a very important financial step for the company.