Frequently Asked (Interview) Questions
Note: These answers are general, if I were to interview with you my answers will be tailored to how my competence, skills, and experience apply to the specific role.
Tell me about yourself.
From a career perspective I am a curious and hardworking individual. As an investment analyst at Eckler, I have come to enjoy learning about market trends, meticulously analyzing data, and making informed investment decisions. Within my current team, I’ve become known as a person that asks questions and is relied upon for data analysis. My hardworking nature came from braving leaving my home country to move to Canada. Within the last couple years I have maintained a strong academic standing, gained 2 years of work experience before graduating, and pursued the CFA designation - all while adjusting to life in Canada.
In my current role I create quarterly performance monitoring reports and conduct research activities within the Fixed Income and Private markets asset classes. I have leveraged my Excel skills to automate processes for the creation of reports which has increased efficiency. I manage15 clients at a time and work with different consultants, where I adapt to client and consultant needs. This aspect has made me a reliable colleague and have allowed me to work on special projects such as a private equity search, reporting market insights, and creating a report from scratch for a recently onboarded client.
What are your greatest strengths and weaknesses?
I take great pride in my time-management and organizational skills. You can find me setting up my weekly calendar, sticky notes, to-do lists, etc…you name it! When I was younger, I have always known that a key component for me to succeed and achieve my goals and tasks was to stay on top the things I needed to do. For any task at hand, I will often sit down and breakdown the task into multiple smaller digestible items. Not only has this method helped make tasks feel less daunting, it has helped me stay motivated to continue working towards the finish line.
A weakness I have that has occasionally brought me additional stress is that I prefer a set of events to follow a scheduled plan. As much as I enjoy organizing my tasks, it has come across to me that knowing every little nitty gritty detail is not always necessary. After much thought and feedback from the people around me, I realized that not everything has to be set up in a plan, and that “going with the flow” is equally enjoyable. I’ve worked through this weakness by always taking a step back to analyze whether things not going the way as they are planned will deter from the key goal.
Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
An honest, but somewhat realistic short answer would be “I don’t know”. But in the sense that I’m not sure what the future holds for me or what opportunities lie ahead.
In the short term, I’d like to increase my knowledge of financial wellness and improve my computer science skills. Thus far, I’ve taken a personal finance course and want to apply the planning, budgeting, and tax aspects I learned into making better financial decisions.
In the long term, I’d like to obtain my CFA designation and hold a role in a company where I can be a mentor. Throughout my co-op experiences I’ve met people who were kind and patient in teaching me the ropes and hope to continue that legacy of kindness and support to future undergraduate students.
What do you do outside of work?
One of the first things you would know about me is that I love playing volleyball - I am learning to play right side because I am left-handed! I recently started learning Taekwondo and currently have a yellow belt. I also keeping my hands busy with cooking, knitting, photography, and painting. On days I want to relax, I like to read.
Tell me about a stressful work situation and how you overcame it.
When I was working at Aon, the team had always wanted to release a report on the insurance and reinsurance industry trends, but have been unable to given the team’s priorities and workload. The project was then passed on to me to complete during the summer of 2021. What made this project stressful was the relatively vague end goal, and what the expectations were, because there were none. I turned to my colleagues and manager for guidance and feedback, where they had reviewed multiple iterations of the project. Despite having less experience in the industry, I applied the statistical knowledge and prior work experience I had to deliver a project that was both useful and easy to understand for any reader.
Questions I may ask you:
How is work allocated among team members?
Tell me about a time there was conflict in the work place and what has management done to solve the problem?
What are the team’s priorities?
How has management supported employees? (e.g. what was specifically implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic? and how has that helped you complete your job?)
What are your favourite aspects about the company? What are your least favourite aspects about the company and how were you able to voice those concerns to management?