few interivew QUESTIONS for HR & Finance with answers

HR Manager:

1. Tell me about yourself?

2.What personal characteristics make you a good HR Manager?

“Well I believe to be a good HR manger I know how to get the work done. Always I am open to ideas, gives respect to my sub-ordinates and always appreciate the contribution of my co-workers. I posses good communication skills and have the vast knowledge related to this field”

3. As an HR Manager how important is multitasking for your job?

“I believe every employee should have the ability of multitasking because being able to carry out variety of tasks will give you an edge over others. Now a day’s organizations are in a quest to maximize productivity with limited resources therefore they usually hunt for flexible employees who are capable of performing wide range of tasks..”

4. what does KPI means?

“KPI stands for Key Performance Indicator. KPI is a matrix that helps set pre determined performance targets. This matrix helps to measure actual performance with the targeted one. So that at any point effective performance measures can be taken easily to get the desired result.”

5. What experience do you have in HR field?

6. What have you done to improve your HR knowledge in the last year?

7. What is job analysis?

“It is the process of describing and recording areas of jobs and specifying the skills requirements necessary to perform the job. It helps to prepare job description and specification which helps to hire a right person.”

8. How to measure effectiveness of workforce?

“As an HR manager, measuring effectiveness of employee performance is one the most important task because many other success related factors are either directly or indirectly linked related with this function. The effectiveness of an employee’s performance can be measured by checking desired outcome. His/her level of interest towards assigned tasks, how he/she take his/her responsibilities. Is he/she following his/her job description or not?”

9. What is core competency of HR?

“The Core Competencies of Human Resources includes understanding the nature of a business, driving change and managing transformation according to organizational needs, the ability to create and manage culture and, management of HR Practices.”

10. What is a HR scorecard?

The HR scorecard is a method to measure the HR function’s effectiveness and efficiency in producing employee behaviors that are needed to achieve the company’s strategic goals. In order to achieve that  company’s strategies is to be known– Understand the links between HR activities, employee behaviors, organizational outcomes, and the organization’s performance.

11. How to set up HR strategy?

“The HR Strategy has to be clearly formulated and the team has to go through several milestones to have the certainty, its development is on the right track. The HR Strategy Development Team has to use several sources and many employees in Human Resources and many managers and employees from the organization have to be asked for the regular feedback.”

12. What is the difference between personnel management and human resource management?

“Human resource management is a broad term HRM goes beyond the administrative tasks of personnel management and encompasses a broad vision of how management deals with the allocation and use of scarce resources for an effective contribution in the organizations success. Whereas the term personnel management is used to refer to the set of activities concerning the workforce which include staffing, payroll, contractual obligations and other administrative tasks. In this respect, personnel management encompasses the range of activities that are to do with managing the workforce rather than resources.”

13. How do you manage your sub-ordinates?

“I firmly believe communication skills are necessary to manage people. If I want to give a task ,firstly I prefer to have a meeting with them so that I can convey what I want from them and if they have any queries they are always allowed to ask as any times as they want. Second step was to prepare an organized report for their convenience. If I encounter any issue between them first I always try to figure out the root cause and then solve it as soon as possible because such things badly affect the productivity of any employee.

Finance chapter:

2.What are your greater weakness?

Perfectionist: I can be described as a perfectionist; however, that could be my weakness. I focus too much on details and this often gives much pressure on me; however, I am trying to resolve this weakness. Stepping back and looking at a bigger scenario should be a better way of moving on than going straightforward and focusing on smaller details.

- Not good with customers: I am not very good at communicating directly with customers; as a result, I’d like to sit at back office. But don’t misunderstand. I like people, too, just not the best salesman in the world, or even a good salesman. I feel it will be much better to take a supportive role than an initiative one.

- Hate paperwork: Working with paperwork is really frustrating to me. I always have difficulties dealing with this. I think it will be easier for me to do all my paperwork at a certain time rather than complete each of them at different times. That’s too hard to keep up with.

3.Why did you quit your last job?

   a. There is no longer chance of developing with my current company as I am doing this for past 13 years. I am looking for a change and to contribute more with my qualification and where I can grow better within a team-focused environment.

6. Why do you think you would do well as manager?

I believe I will do this job very well. I have adequate experience and skills for this responsibility. Besides, I’m enthusiastic and very dynamic which shall devote all my effort and mind to perform my duties.

7. What kind of salary are you looking for Finance manager?

Befitting to this job and prevailing pay scale plus just above my present package.

5. What is a payback period?

“The Payback Period represents the amount of time that it takes for a project to recover its initial cost.”

6. Explain the concept of capital market?

“Capital markets basically a place where individuals and companies can raise long term funds by trading financial securities.”

7. Give the exact definition of marginal costing?

“Marginal Costing is a technique where only variable costs of production are treated as costs of the product and fixed costs are classified as period costs and written off in the income statement in the period in which they are incurred.

2. Tell us what budgeting method do you use?

            “There are many budgeting methods like incremental budgeting, zero-based budgeting, priority-based, decision conferencing, performance-based, resource-restricted and many other we usually prefer to use according to nature of the company and current requirements.”

3. What points should be involved while making budgets?

            “Well before making budgeting plans for any organization one have to understand the values, strategy and plans, possessing deep knowledge and skills to develop those plans which will be cost effective and cost efficient and have the ability to understand what will be involved in generating and raising funds.”

4. Define VAT?

            “VAT is a stand for value added tax is a form of consumption tax.”

6. What does contingency amount means?

            “Contingency amount is an amount that you put aside to deal with unforeseen events.”

7. What are the ways a company can manipulate cash flows?

            “There are lots of ways a company can manipulate its cash flows like cash sales may not be recorded, fictitious allowances and returns given to customers, teeming and leading may be followed and many other.”

8. How will a decrease in financial leverage affect a company’s cost of equity capital, if at all?

            Decrease in financial leverage decreases risk and therefore decreases cost of equity

9. Why might a company choose debt over equity financing?

            “If borrowing is available at low interest rates and shareholders want to take more risk for more gain”

Chartered accountant:

1. Explain the golden rules of accounting?

“Golden rule based on three accounts real, personal and nominal. When we talk about real accounts, we debited what comes in and credited what goes out. In case of personal accounts we debit the receiver and credit the giver. In nominal accounting the basic six types of transactions are divided into two categories the first category consisting of the three transactions namely expenses, drawings and assets are all debit in nature and hence are debited when there is an increase in any one of them. While on the other hand the second category is made up of credit nature transactions namely income, revenue and liabilities, increase in any one of them will lead to a credit entry.”

2. Explain what inflation is and how it is measured?

“Basically Inflation is an overall increase in the prices of goods and services. It is a decrease in the value of a currency. There are three types of measurement, CPI, Core Inflation and WPI. CPI is the most common measurement technique, using a market basket of goods and measuring their price from a point in the past.”

5. What’s the purpose of Balance Sheet?

“Balance sheet gives you a quick snap shot of where the business stands at a point in time. How solvent is the business? How liquid are its assets?”

7. What is the difference between Trade discount, Cash discount and rebate?

“Trade discount is normally given to the regular customers who are buying the products in large numbers. Cash discount is similar to above but will be given credit customers on return of their credits. Rebate is like buy for $65/- and pay only $60/-.”

8. Explain what is BOP?

“BOP stands for balance of payment .it is an economic term. Its a way of measuring a countries liabilities it owes others. It basically tracks transactions of four types that occur between the countries namely sale of goods, sale of services, finance and capital. BOP usually has an impact on the balance of trade as well.