34 Interview Questions for Investor Relations (With Example Answers)
In investor relations, it’s usually part of the job to make sure investors and the company’s management team can talk to each other. Preparing for an interview can help you get a job in investor relations, whether you’re switching careers or looking for a similar job. If you look at examples of questions that interviewers might ask, you can plan your answers ahead of time and be better prepared for the interview. In this article, we talk about a variety of general, background, and in-depth investor relations interview questions and give some sample answers to help you think of your own.
General questions
The hiring manager will usually start an interview with some general questions to find out more about you before moving on to more difficult questions. General interview questions usually ask about your career goals, your personality, and if you’d be a good fit for the way the company does things. Here are some questions that interviewers may ask in general:
- Why do you want to leave the company where you work now?
- Tell me about yourself.
- How long do you plan to keep working here?
- What do you want from your next job?
- What do your boss and other coworkers say about you?
- How do you plan to get where you want to go in your career?
- What are the best and worst things about you?
- Who else besides our company are you meeting with?
- If you were hired, when could you start?
- Do you have a question for us?
Questions about work and history from the past
When asked about your experience and background, you can talk about what you’ve done well and what your daily tasks were at other jobs. Think about looking into the company’s history, such as their mission and vision, and connect some of your answers to what the company stands for. You can also talk about how some of your skills match up with those listed in the job description. During your interview, you might be asked the following questions about your experience and background:
- What do you think is the best thing you’ve done at work?
- What’s the hardest thing you’ve had to do in your career so far, and how did it go?
- What are your responsibilities at the job you have now?
- What is the worst thing about your job?
- What kind of work environment do you do best in?
- What would your boss and other people you work with say about you?
- How do you deal with stressful situations or things that need to be done quickly?
- How do you decide which of the things you have to do every day are most important?
- What should I know about you that isn’t on your CV?
- Do you prefer to work alone or with others?
- When did you like your job the most?
In-depth questions
After the interviewer has had a chance to get to know you better, they may ask you a few more in-depth questions to find out how you would handle certain situations in the job. Most of the time, these questions are based on scenarios and ask you to describe a time when you dealt with a certain situation or how you would deal with a made-up situation.
Some of these questions are easier to answer if you use the STAR method, which is to talk about a specific situation, the task you had to do, the steps you took to do it, and the results you got. During your investor relations interview, you may be asked the following questions:
- Tell me about a time at your current job when you showed that you were a leader.
- Tell me about a time when you and a coworker didn’t agree on a decision at work and how you solved the problem.
- Tell me about a mistake you made at work and how you made it right.
- Have you ever disagreed with your boss about something? If so, explain what went wrong.
- Tell me about a time when you had to deal with a tough phone call.
- How can you make sure that financial models are still useful and up-to-date?
- In your current job, what kind of financial and analytical work do you do every day?
- What would you tell a large investor who missed an application deadline?
- Tell me about a business deal you made with a client and what the deal was about.
- What skills do you think would be most important for you to do well at this job?
Questions about investor relations for an interview, with examples of how to answer them
Here are some examples of answers to interview questions that can help you prepare for your next one:
1. Have you ever butted heads with your boss? How did things go?
Hiring managers like to ask this question to see how well you can talk to people in charge and how well you work with them. It’s important to admit that disagreements can happen, but you can talk to each other in a constructive way to find a solution that works for everyone.
Example: “I’ve never been in a big fight, but I’ve had disagreements that needed to be solved. A few months ago, my boss and the manager of accounting had an argument. So, they asked me to take on more work so that I could help them talk to each other. I told my boss that I would rather wait until the two of them worked out their problems so that everyone in both departments could work in a better environment.
We decided that I would take on one more responsibility because I already had experience and wanted to learn more. In return, they agreed to meet with the manager of accounting to talk about their problems and figure out what to do next.”
2. What do you think is the most important skill for someone who works in investor relations?
Interviewers want to know that you know something about the field and have skills that are useful in it. Doing research on the company before the interview might help you figure out what skills they value most in their employees.
Example: “Every day at work, I use a lot of skills, but I think the most important one is communication. Employees in this job are always talking to stakeholders, members of their company’s management team, and people from other company departments. If you know how to talk to people well, you can do your work faster, cause less confusion, and have more time to do other things.”
3. Please explain what a hedge fund is in simple terms.
Example: “A hedge fund is a type of actively managed fund that invests in high-risk, high-return investments. Managers do this by making deals that are risky but bring in more money.”
