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A Finance Manager bears responsibility for managing the financial health of a a company, which is a crucial role to take on in any organization.
These professionals work to promote company growth and success while ensuring every action a company makes maintains legal financial practices. Their purview generally includes astute financial planning to determine ways to not only grow an organization’s business but pay off liabilities as well. They’re tasked with staying on top of financial documents and practices to ensure accurate tax compliance, and they also closely collaborate with other departments to achieve financial goals.
If this is the next step on your career path, you may be wondering what questions get asked in a Finance Manager interview. If so, read on for a list of common Finance Manager interview questions and answers that will help you feel confident when you meet with hiring managers.
This is a popular one on the roster of Financial Manager interview questions, which is why it tops our list. Potential employers will want to know that you will do everything in your power to ensure accuracy in the documents you and your team record and submit. And a huge part of doing so comes down to your ability to identify and then remedy potential errors.
A hiring manager will want to know your preferred system, as well as others you’ve worked with in the past. It will help them identify how ready you are to step into the role based on what systems the company currently uses, and how you might positively alter the organization’s ways of working by proposing a new or different system to add into the mix.
A leader can really only be successful if the team they manage is successful as well. So, when asked this question, you’ll be expected to give details on how you prefer to run a team, and how your methods of doing so have proven efficient and effective in the past. It will also help them gauge how well you’re likely to fit into a company’s culture and current ways of working.=
The ability to work under pressure and still come through makes any candidate more appealing. Hiring managers will want to hear about how you’ve successfully handled a quick turnaround without dropping the proverbial ball or letting any pertinent information fall through the cracks.
Your interviewer will want to know what kind of budgets you’ve worked with in the past to see if it’s comparable to what you’d be handling in their organization. If you haven’t yet worked with a budget of a similar size, they’ll want to hear about your success managing smaller budgets, as it may indicate that you’re ready to step into a higher budgetary range while still ensuring the company’s success.
How do you go about identifying and then protecting against potential financial risks?A successful Finance Manager will do everything in their power to keep the company safe while still remaining profitable. And that oftentimes entails calling out risks that likely should be avoided. Be sure to carefully outline how you work with risk management and compliance professionals to avoid these kinds of issues.
Make sure you keep up a solid footing in current trends, as being in the know will help your interviewer gauge ways you can help their company better perform. It can also enable them to get a feel for how you might address incoming challenges that have potential to affect not only the organization, but also the financial sector as a whole. They’ll be looking for someone who is always working to stay current and learn new skills or ways of ensuring success.
This may be last on our list of interview questions for Finance Manager positions, but it is definitely not the least important. Nobody can properly see 100% into the future, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do your best to predict what might happen in the sector — and then provide insight into how it may affect a company’s business. Come prepared with examples of past forecasts and be ready to explain their accuracy as well as what effects that had on your previous organizations.
If you’re searching for a Finance Manager position and find yourself interviewing, make sure you’re prepared to answer these interview questions and others in a similar vein. You’ll also want to be ready to provide specific examples from your past experiences.
Additionally, be sure to do plenty of research on the company you’re interviewing with, and the position you’re interviewing for. The more you know on these fronts, the readier and more confident you’ll be when you step into the interview.
You may also find it helpful to practice your responses ahead of time. You don’t want your side of the interview to sound too rehearsed, but it certainly can help you feel more prepared as you walk in the door or log on to a video call.
You can find more in-depth interview tips in our Advice section. And if you’re searching for your first or next Finance Manager role, check out the job listings for organizations Michael Page is currently working with.
