Question

• What challenges are you looking for?
• Explain your approach to teamwork. Can you tell how you have had to adapt to work efficiently as part of a team?
• What have you learned from mistakes in this job?
• Describe a typical work week for a financial controller position?
• What is the most challenging financial project you have ever worked on?
• Explain about a time when you successfully dealt with a difficult and demanding client?
• What types of reports or presentations have you made for executive teams?
• Recall a time you had to motivate your team to complete a complex project under a tight deadline.
• How have you reduced expenses at previous companies?
• What are the financial strengths as well as weaknesses of our industry?
• Give me an example of a decision you made that benefited your company.
• What kind of accounting or financial reporting softwares are you familiar with?
• How have you increased revenues in previous organizations you have worked for?
• What is your approach to hiring financial staff?
• Recall a time you had to convince an executive team to make an important financial decision.

Answer 1

If you find the responses useful, please do up-vote. This will help me improve the quality of the responses.

Here are the responses to the questions:

· Challenges of interest are regulatory compliance in finance and cybersecurity.

· None of us is as powerful as a team. “Together Everyone Achieves More” is the most useful mantra. Adapting to team work is always necessary. There have been instances wherein team comprises of members far more senior and with time and effort that rapport has been built.

· Never compromise on security is the most important learning. An application or portal is only as secure as its weakest link.

· Typical work week for a financial controller involves broadly retrieving or refreshing reports the financial metrics, income statements and spends. Firstly, the financial controller needs to review all the available reports which is followed by conclusions or inferences. Further the financial controller participates in the weekly operations review to bring in the financial reports and the recommendations to the teams and departments the financial controller partners with.

· Most challenging financial project has been the digitization of manual workflows around expense claims – ease of use, security and quick processing of the claims has been the key challenges – and security is very imperative in such projects like any other.

· Many clients have been challenging, especially in the financial domain. Working in investment banking especially with old-old population is a challenge and many such challenges have been around spreading the latest financial laws, provisions to such a population. This challenge has been dealt with in simple way – carry prints of the documents you want to share – older population is still very comfortable with prints.

· Executive teams usually look for overall budget and spends, projections ahead, billability if applicable

· Motivation in tough times thrives on team work. It is important and so has always been the effort to encourage team work, build a cross-functional team (so people are not left alone with work spikes) and above all stay connected to your team during tough times. Being a hands-on leader also helps.

· There are various expense optimization avenues which have been useful

a. Reduce travel expenses – encourage virtual communication via video conferencing

b. If in leadership position, continuously encourage team to focus on not only address current work needs but to upskill for the future – helps people take on different work or move within different verticals when needs arises

c. Looks for different ways to reward employees – non-monetary rewards also work very well – and will balance the expenditure part too

· Financial strengths are the digitization and automated transactions and huge reductions in workflow turn-around times. There are areas to improve though (weaknesses) like cashless and paperless travel possibilities.

· Financial decision which has been a huge benefit it to move away from usage of temporary prepaid debit forex cards to providing credit cards to employees for travel expenses. Prepaid forex debit cards require a top-up before employee travels and requires currency conversion and then during expenses claim after travel the unused money must be pulled back again resulting in another currency conversion. Double conversions result in financial loss.

· Financial software known are Mint, FutureAdvisor, Quicken, WorkDay

· Increase of revenues has been achieved via the following:

a. Focus on increasing number of customers – customers satisfaction/delight, happy customers referring each other

b. Increasing the portfolio or offering and enhancing the pricing accordingly

· Hiring financial staff is handled via the following approach:

a. Clearly identify the financial goals of the organization to begin with

b. Identify the skills required to meet the financial goals

c. Hire staff which meets the necessary skill requirements

· Digitization of travel expenses claim flow has been the most challenging decision to convince. The interactions and negotiations involved consolidating requirements from various sources and staying focused on income tax laws as well intention to provide ease of use to the employees.

If you find the responses useful, please do up-vote. This will help me improve the quality of the responses.

Here are the responses to the questions:

· Challenges of interest are regulatory compliance in finance and cybersecurity.

· None of us is as powerful as a team. “Together Everyone Achieves More” is the most useful mantra. Adapting to team work is always necessary. There have been instances wherein team comprises of members far more senior and with time and effort that rapport has been built.

· Never compromise on security is the most important learning. An application or portal is only as secure as its weakest link.

· Typical work week for a financial controller involves broadly retrieving or refreshing reports the financial metrics, income statements and spends. Firstly, the financial controller needs to review all the available reports which is followed by conclusions or inferences. Further the financial controller participates in the weekly operations review to bring in the financial reports and the recommendations to the teams and departments the financial controller partners with.

· Most challenging financial project has been the digitization of manual workflows around expense claims – ease of use, security and quick processing of the claims has been the key challenges – and security is very imperative in such projects like any other.

· Many clients have been challenging, especially in the financial domain. Working in investment banking especially with old-old population is a challenge and many such challenges have been around spreading the latest financial laws, provisions to such a population. This challenge has been dealt with in simple way – carry prints of the documents you want to share – older population is still very comfortable with prints.

· Executive teams usually look for overall budget and spends, projections ahead, billability if applicable

· Motivation in tough times thrives on team work. It is important and so has always been the effort to encourage team work, build a cross-functional team (so people are not left alone with work spikes) and above all stay connected to your team during tough times. Being a hands-on leader also helps.

· There are various expense optimization avenues which have been useful

a. Reduce travel expenses – encourage virtual communication via video conferencing

b. If in leadership position, continuously encourage team to focus on not only address current work needs but to upskill for the future – helps people take on different work or move within different verticals when needs arises

c. Looks for different ways to reward employees – non-monetary rewards also work very well – and will balance the expenditure part too

· Financial strengths are the digitization and automated transactions and huge reductions in workflow turn-around times. There are areas to improve though (weaknesses) like cashless and paperless travel possibilities.

· Financial decision which has been a huge benefit it to move away from usage of temporary prepaid debit forex cards to providing credit cards to employees for travel expenses. Prepaid forex debit cards require a top-up before employee travels and requires currency conversion and then during expenses claim after travel the unused money must be pulled back again resulting in another currency conversion. Double conversions result in financial loss.

· Financial software known are Mint, FutureAdvisor, Quicken, WorkDay

· Increase of revenues has been achieved via the following:

a. Focus on increasing number of customers – customers satisfaction/delight, happy customers referring each other

b. Increasing the portfolio or offering and enhancing the pricing accordingly

· Hiring financial staff is handled via the following approach:

a. Clearly identify the financial goals of the organization to begin with

b. Identify the skills required to meet the financial goals

c. Hire staff which meets the necessary skill requirements

· Digitization of travel expenses claim flow has been the most challenging decision to convince. The interactions and negotiations involved consolidating requirements from various sources and staying focused on income tax laws as well intention to provide ease of use to the employees.