39 Questions to Ask at a Business Intelligence Interview (With Answers)
As business intelligence technologies have grown in popularity, the need for analysts in this field has grown. If you want to be a business intelligence analyst, it can help to know what kinds of questions the hiring manager might ask. If you give answers that are well-thought-out and full of details, you may have a better chance of impressing the interviewer and getting the job. Business Intelligence Interview
This article looks at some of the most common business intelligence interview questions and shows how to answer them.
11 general questions
The person interviewing you can find out more about you by asking you general questions. At the start of the interview, the hiring manager might ask you some general questions about your education and work history. To start an interview for a business intelligence analyst, they might ask:
- What about this job makes you want it?
- What do you know about our company?
- What do you like best about being a business intelligence analyst?
- Why do you think a business intelligence analyst is important?
- What do you think are your best traits, and why do you think that?
- What do you think your flaws are, and why do you think those are your flaws?
- How well do you work with other people?
- What is the best thing about going to work for you?
- What projects do you have done?
- How would you describe the work of a business intelligence analyst?
- In five years, where do you want to be?
11 questions about your business intelligence experience and background
Interviewers want to know about your work habits and how you did in the past, so they ask about your experience and background. The interviewer may ask you more detailed questions about how you meet the job’s requirements, such as:
- How do you get information? What software do you use?
- How do you get the information you need?
- What do you know about research that is both qualitative and quantitative?
- What do you think are the three most important qualities for a business intelligence analyst?
- What advice would you give to someone who is just starting out as a business intelligence analyst?
- Since when have you been giving talks?
- How do you look at business intelligence differently than other analysts?
- How do you talk to people who aren’t in your field about business intelligence?
- From what you’ve seen, what do you think is the hardest part of being a business intelligence analyst?
- What is risk management, and how does it work?
- Which business class do you think helped you the most?
Twelve detailed questions about what business intelligence is and how it works
The person in charge of hiring usually asks more detailed questions about your business intelligence skills and methods. Most of the time, the interviewer asks questions about the job in question and what it entails.
- What is the purpose of each part of a SQL statement?
- How can you tell the difference between an index that is clustered and one that isn’t?
- How do you make reports? What tools do you know how to use?
- What does it mean by SSIS architecture?
- What’s the difference between having a view and having a view come true?
- How do you figure out what the market trends are?
- What are some of your favorite programs for turning data into graphs and charts?
- Can you define a decision support system?
- There are three parts to a business intelligence system.
- Can you name a few places that SSRS gets its data from?
- Can you tell me what MDM functions you use most often?
- What would be the point of putting code in a report?
Five questions about business intelligence, with answers that show
Check out these sample questions and answers to help you prepare for your interview:
1.How do you know you can do this job?
Interviewers ask this question to see how you feel about your own skills and experiences. Try to answer this question with confidence to show that you know your skills and qualifications well. You might want to talk about your skills and work experience as a business intelligence analyst when you talk about your qualifications.
Example: “I am qualified for this job because I have been a business intelligence analyst for a long time at several tech companies. I learned how to collect data and figure out what it means at my previous jobs. From what the job description says, you need someone who is very good at analyzing things. I think that my skills at analyzing data can help your company spot small but important changes in data results and figure out what caused them.”
2. What do you think is the most important thing a business intelligence analyst does?
This question asks what you think about the role. Try to think about what a business intelligence analyst does and which tasks you think are the most important. The interviewer also wants to know about your ability to lead, so you could talk about a time when you took charge and showed initiative.
Example: “I think that the most important thing for a business intelligence analyst to do is to accurately evaluate data. The company depends on the business intelligence analyst to do a good job of analyzing the data it gathers, so I give the project my full attention and keep checking my results to see if anything is wrong. A business intelligence analyst is important to a company in many ways. I use tools like Microsoft Power BI to keep track of data over time. I often look at these reports to make sure that the information I have is correct and consistent.”
3.What do you like best about the business intelligence process?
Hiring managers will ask you this question to find out why you want the job. Your answer shows how much you care about business intelligence and the work this company does. Try to give more details about how you’ve grown as a business intelligence analyst and how that’s made you interested in the field.
Example: “The part of the business intelligence process that I like best is analyzing how customers act. I learn about my customers by finding out what they like, what they don’t like, and what they need. As a business analyst, I use facts and useful information to show that my conclusions are right. I like that this information is correct and tells me about our customers.”
4. Can you tell me about a time when your data made a big difference for a business?
This question is about the more difficult parts of a business intelligence analyst’s skill set, like how to deal with conflict and big changes. Try to answer this question in a way that shows you can be patient and think critically. Explain a specific problem and what caused it, as well as how you plan to share your data in a respectful way.
Example: “As a business intelligence analyst at a marketing firm, I kept track of how well our clients’ online ads did. At the end of the quarter, I noticed that our customers were less interested and we weren’t getting any new ones.”
“I decided to find out more about this and figure out why our marketing plans weren’t working. Then I told the management team what I had learned so we could talk about how to make advertising work better. When I showed this group of data to the business, they decided to open more social media accounts. In two weeks, the number of sales went up.”
5. What is OLAP? Why is it important?
This question sees if you know what a certain business intelligence term means. Interviewers will ask you questions about words and phrases to see if you know what they mean and if you have the right education. Try to explain what a term means and why it’s important to your job as a business intelligence analyst when someone asks you about it.
Example: “OLAP, which stands for “online analytical processing,” is important because it makes it easier to collect data. People often use a labeled cube with business information like product data and retail locations to explain what OLAP is. A hypercube is what this cube is called. With OLAP, a business is looked at from many different angles. I use OLAP to see how a business did from the customers’ and salespeople’s points of view.”
