Finance & Business Operations Topics
Financial management, budgeting, ROI analysis, and business operations. Covers financial forecasting, valuation, and operational metrics.
Three Statement Financial Modeling
Build integrated financial models that connect income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement. Understand the relationships: net income flows from income statement to retained earnings on balance sheet; changes in balance sheet accounts impact cash flows; operating activities feed cash available for investing and financing. Practice building complete models from scratch. Understand how to handle circular references and document key assumptions.
Financial Systems and Process Improvement
Cover the design, implementation, automation, and continuous improvement of finance processes and systems. Topics include mapping existing processes and pain points, designing target process flows and controls, implementing enterprise resource planning systems and accounting or reporting tools, automating routine reconciliations and journal entries, building data pipelines and dashboards, embedding controls into systems, documenting standard operating procedures, testing and validating changes, quantifying time saved and error reduction, and driving change management and adoption across stakeholders while maintaining attention to detail.
Financial Metrics and KPI Development
Encompasses selecting, designing, and operationalizing financial and operational key performance indicators to measure strategy execution and business health. Candidates should demonstrate how to define what to measure, set realistic and time bound targets, establish data sources and calculation rules, account for metric relationships and trade offs, and identify limitations and unintended consequences. Skills include aligning metrics to business objectives, prioritizing leading and lagging indicators, designing dashboards and reporting cadence, driving accountability through ownership and escalation, and using metrics to inform decision making while recognizing when qualitative assessment is needed.
Financial Reporting Quality and Accuracy
Test commitment to accurate and high quality financial reporting and the candidate approaches to improve it. Topics include establishing and documenting accounting policies, month end close procedures, reconciliations and variance analysis, root cause investigation and correction of errors, designing control and approval workflows, reporting governance and audit readiness, and using automation and standardization to reduce manual errors and shorten close cycles.
Internal Controls & Process Integrity
Expertise in designing, implementing, and maintaining internal controls across financial processes. Understanding of control frameworks (COSO), risk-control matrices, segregation of duties, testing protocols, and evaluation of control effectiveness. Ability to remediate deficiencies.
Technical Accounting and Standards
Focuses on depth in accounting standards and the application of technical judgment. Candidates should be ready to discuss how to interpret and apply applicable accounting frameworks such as generally accepted accounting principles and international financial reporting standards, document accounting policy choices, evaluate and support significant accounting estimates including depreciation, allowances and impairments, analyze complex or nonstandard transactions, prepare required disclosures and technical memos, and work with auditors to resolve technical accounting issues. Interviewers will assess ability to reason through judgment calls, quantify estimate uncertainty, and design processes to operationalize complex accounting requirements.
Financial Policies & Procedures Development
Skill in developing clear, comprehensive financial policies ensuring consistency, compliance, and operational efficiency. Ability to communicate procedures effectively and ensure organizational adherence.
Financial Strategy and Impact
Covers the candidate ability to think strategically about finance and to quantify the business value of financial work. Topics include identifying key financial priorities that align to company strategy, unit economics, revenue projections, profitability analysis, and selection and tracking of key performance indicators. Also includes long term financial planning and resource allocation, prioritizing investments, managing trade offs between short term performance and long term value creation, and building business cases. Candidates should be able to describe major financial initiatives they have led or contributed to, explain methodologies for measuring impact such as cost savings or efficiency gains, and connect project outcomes to organizational objectives.
Cash Flow and Financial Analysis
Understanding and analyzing cash flow dynamics including operating, investing, and financing cash flows; forecasting cash requirements; distinguishing cash generation from profitability; and applying working capital levers to improve liquidity. Candidates should be able to interpret cash flow statements, identify cash drivers, build simple cash forecasts, and recommend operational changes to improve cash conversion cycles.