This article contains 50 business analyst interview questions and answers that an aspiring business analyst must practice before a job interview. Show
This blog contains a list of business analyst interview questions and answers. You will find it helpful if you are a hiring manager who is looking for business analyst questions to ask during an interview and also if you are a job seeker who is interested in business analyst jobs.
Demand prediction of driver availability using multistep time series analysisDownloadable solution code | Explanatory videos | Tech Support Start Project Table of Contents
Role of a Business Analyst: Skills and OpportunitiesThe role of a business analyst is not a single-dimensional one. The skills needed to become a successful business analyst span a broad spectrum of categories. Here are some of the key skills that a business analyst aspirant must possess to become a successful business analyst.
Business Analyst job opportunities are not going to die down anytime soon in the future. The statement can be backed by the statistical facts revealed by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)*, where business analyst jobs are expected to grow 14% from 2018 to 2028. The pace is pretty fast when compared to other job roles. Ace Your Next Job Interview with Mock Interviews from Experts to Improve Your Skills and Boost Confidence! So, if you are considering a career in the management field and aspiring to become a Business Analyst, read this blog to understand what kind of questions are asked in a business analyst interview. These questions will help you develop a good understanding of the role of a business analyst and provide you with an idea of what skills hiring managers to expect from a job applicant. If you enjoy reading a pdf instead of a blog and want business analyst interview questions and answers pdf, you can download it for free from our website. Download Business Analyst Interview Questions and Answers PDF for FREE 50 Business Analyst Interviews Questions and AnswersWe will now begin with the detailed business analyst interviews questions and answers. For your convenience, the questions and answers have been divided into five categories.
Recommended Reading: Top 6 Big Data and Business Analytics Companies to Work Junior Business Analyst Interview Questions/Entry-level Business Analyst Interview QuestionsIn this section, you will find those interview questions for business analyst profiles that are usually asked for beginners in this field. We have also included the answers for each question to give you an idea about how to answer business analyst job interview questions. Q1. What are the four core responsibilities of a Business Analyst? The four most important responsibilities of a Business Analyst include:
Q2. List a few methods for eliciting requirements. Document Analysis Survey/questionnaires Focus group Prototyping Requirements work-shops Interface analysis Interviews Observation Brainstorming Q3. Describe a few categories of stakeholders in a business organization.
Q4.What is the RUP method? RUP stands for Rational Unified Process. RUP is a procedure of software development that is “iterative, architecture-centric, and use-case driven”. The RUP method involves listing requirements as use cases, which helps keep track of value to the lone business stakeholders for each piece of serviceability. The crucial principles of RUP include focussing on risks, primarily paying attention to the quality of the project, and prioritizing focus on value. Q5. What do you understand by UML? UML is the abbreviation for Unified Modeling Language. Business Analysts use it to describe the requirements and outline of software systems. UML allows them to conveniently layout project workflows which help in visualizing the scope of the project. There are different types of UML diagrams like use case diagrams, complete domain diagrams, sequence diagrams, etc. Q6. What are the problems associated with choosing the waterfall model? In the waterfall model, each project process is completed linearly, and at the end, the deliverable is ready. This model is out of practice these days because pushing the choice of working software towards the end of the project is not fruitful as software picked using the waterfall methodology often fails to satisfy stakeholders’ needs and preferences. Another problem associated with this model is that it makes it difficult for an organization to get accustomed to changes as the requirements are pre-defined. Q7. Briefly explain the Agile methodology. Agile Methodology focuses on taking small steps to allow the users to decide upon a working software as early as possible Agile methodologies’ center of attention is collaboration, interaction, and responding to change over procedures, documentation, and following a master plan. Q8. List a few categories of tools that a business analyst must know according to you.
Q9. Name two diagrams that a Business analyst can use to outline a project. Collaboration diagrams Case diagrams Q10. What are the essential stages of a business development process? The four key stages are forming, storming, norming, and performing. Q11. What do you understand by exceptions? These are the unwanted errors that are revealed after one runs an application. Get Closer To Your Dream of Becoming a Data Scientist with 70+ Solved End-to-End ML Projects Q12. What do you mean by Requirement Elicitation? Requirements Elicitation is the process of investigating and identifying the requirements of a system from users, customers, and other stakeholders. The process is also often referred to as "requirement gathering". Q13. List the differences between business requirements and needs. A business requirement is a technically detailed description put forward by stakeholders for solving a business problem or objective. On the other hand, a need is a concise statement that summarises all the requirements. For example:
Recommended Reading: 50 Tableau Interview Questions and Answers for 2021 Technical Business Analyst Interview QuestionsHere are a few common questions you will likely encounter in the second or third hiring interview round for a business analyst role. These are technical questions that allow the hiring manager to examine how deeply you understand the responsibilities of a Business Analyst. Q1. What is a flowchart, and why does a Business Analyst need it? A flowchart is a diagram that shows the workflow of a business system using signs and symbols. They provide business analysts with a straightforward way of highlighting the key processes involved in a business process. You can share your experience of using a flowchart if you have done it before. Q2. Explain SRS and its components. SRS stands for Software Requirements Specification. It is a document that specifies which software will be used and a justification for choosing it to fulfill the needs of stakeholders. It also highlights how the software is expected to perform and what goals it will achieve. The components of SRS include:
Q3. What is BRD? BRD stands for Business Requirements Document. It is a document that contains the objectives and solution methodology of a business project. It highlights the customers’ needs and expectations and the constraints that play a crucial role in implementing the business solution. Q4. Differentiate between BRD and SRS.
Q5. What do you mean by Black box testing? Black-box testing is a way of testing software to evaluate the functionality of an application without diving into its internal workings or structures. Q6. What is BPMN? BPMN stands for Business Process Model and Notation. It is a flowchart-based diagram that is used to project the layout of implementing a business problem’s solution end-to-end. Q7. What is the significance of GAP analysis? GAP analysis is a method that companies utilize to keep track of their business growth. It is used to draw comparisons between the current performance and the expected performance. It reflects how well the company is utilizing the resources at hand and allows the stakeholders to identify how to reach its full potential. Q8. What do you mean by Scope creep? Scope highlights the work that needs to be done in a project. In project management, scope creep refers to an increase in the project requirements as the project work progresses. An example would be the number of expected deliverables from the project increased from one to five as the project life cycle progressed. Scope creep is usually caused when there is a conflict of interest among different stakeholders. Guess-Estimate Interview Questions for Business AnalystsApart from the business analyst technical interview questions mentioned above, specific technical questions target the guess estimate skills. Here are a few such business analyst interview questions with answers. Q9. How many cups of tea Mumbaikars drank last month? For keeping the solution of this problem relatively simple, you can weigh each day of the week equally; that is, the number of cups people consume per day is independent of which day of the week it is. Mumbai has a population of 1.25 crores. Let us take that number to be one crore to make the calculations less complex. Roughly, you can assume that 20% of the population are children and likely do not drink tea. Also, you can consider the following assumptions:
The calculations for the above-mentioned categories will be as follows: 0.3*3*7 (percentage, number cups in a week = 1*) =6.3 for consistent tea drinkers 0.2*1*7 = 1.4 for daily tea drinkers 0.2*1*1 =0.2 for casual tea drinkers 0 for non-drinkers Total number of tea drinkers= (6.3 + 1.4+0.2)*1.25 = 7.9*1.25 = 9.875 crores Q10. How many cars do you think are there in Delhi? You can restrict the discussion for this question by considering only personal-use cars. The population of Delhi is about 1.9 crores, and we can 2.0 crores for simplicity. Let us consider that each family in Delhi has four members as Delhi is a metropolitan city. Now, not all families are capable of owning a car in the city. So, we will assume the population is divided into three categories based on their annual income (low, middle, and high-income class). In India, a large number of families fall under the category of the middle class, so it is safe to consider the following percentages: 30% Low-income class 50% Middle-Income class 20% High-Income class Another assumption that seems plausible is that only 50% of middle-class families own a car. For the high-income class, we will suppose each family owns two cars. So, the calculations will be as follows: 0 for Low income class 0.5*0.5*1 = 0.25 for Middle Income class 0.2*1*2 = 0.4 for High Income class Total = (0.4 + 0.25)*2/4 crore = 32.5 lakhs (Dividing by four to count the number of families) Q11. Estimate the number of people using the iPhone in India. To keep it straightforward, we will not consider the version of the iPhone separately and suppose all the versions of iPhones together. Since iPhones are somewhat expensive, we will assume that only professionals and people in their 40s/50s own an iPhone. Thus, senior citizens (20%) and young adults and children(20%) will not be considered. iPhones are expensive enough that they do not attract a large portion of professionals. Most young professionals have responsibilities and often find it challenging to afford an iPhone. So, we will assume only 5% of the professionals and senior citizens are eligible for purchasing an iPhone. Now, not all professionals consider an iPhone as a worthwhile investment and often switch to other options available in the market. We will therefore consider that only 50% of such people own an iPhone. The calculations will thus be: 60% * 0.05 * 0.5 * 125 crore ~ 2.4 crores iPhones are there in India Q12. Give us a rough estimate of the number of ping-pong balls that one can fit inside a Boeing 747. There are various sizes of ping pong balls available in the market. You can assume anyone that you want if the interviewee does not specify it. For this problem, we will have to estimate the volume of a Boeing 747 aircraft. Let us start by assuming it can accommodate 400 people. This means it will have 400 seats. Let us now believe the aisle space can accommodate about two rows of 40 more seats. Additionally, we take into account the remaining space by assuming the space available above the seats is the same as that occupied by the seats. So, we have 960 seats now. Lastly, we count the space for the galley and washroom by adding 20 more seats. To make it less complicated, let us round the number of seats to 1K. Now, for each seat, we will roughly calculate the space occupied by an average human in a sitting position. Taking that to be 4ft x 2ft x 1 ft, we have 8 cubic feet of space. So, the plane has 8K cubic feet ~1.4 x 107 cubic inches of space. If we consider the volume of a ping-pong ball to be 5 cubic inches, then the number of balls that can be accommodated with 70% packing efficiency is ~ (0.7*1.4 x 107)/5 = 1960000. SQL Interview Questions For Business AnalystApart from testing your knowledge about the jargon that is required for a business analyst role, the hiring manager will also ask you SQL business analyst interview questions. SQL is database management software that business analysts widely use to analyze the company’s growth and business performance. In this section, you will learn how to answer common business analyst SQL interview questions. Q1. Differentiate between unique key, foreign key, and primary key.
Q2. Explain different types of joins. Here are the different types of joins available in SQL that one can use while extracting data from a table.
Q3. How are the TRUNCATE and DELETE commands different?
Q4. Can one create user-defined functions? If yes, justify with the help of an example. Yes, one can create user-defined functions in SQL to avoid writing queries with the same logic repeatedly. Q5. What does an ALIAS command do? ALIAS command is used to define a new name for an existing table. For example, consider a table with the name Student, and one wants to use the name stu for it. ‘Select stu.StuID, Ex.Result from student stu, Exam as Ex where stu.stuID = Ex. StuID Q6. Write an SQL query for creating an empty table from an existing table. Here is an example. Select * into xyz from student where 2=3 Q7. How will you perform pattern matching in SQL? Pattern matching in SQL can be performed using the LIKE operator. One can use ‘%’ to identify pattern zero or more characters and ‘_’ for identifying patterns that match precisely one character. Q8. What is a database cursor? A database cursor is a pointer that points to a particular row in a table. It is capable of traversing all the records in a table and is thus used for adding, retrieving, and removing rows from a table. Q9. List and explain the different types of indexes. The three types of indexes are: Clustered Index: A clustered index is an index that reorders the values in a table based on the values present in a particular column of a table. One table can only have one clustered index. Non clustered Index: Non clustered indexes are the indexes where the order of row values in a table column does not align with the implicit order of values in the table. Unique Index: A unique index is a column in a database used to uniquely identify each row in a table. It makes sure that no two rows have the same key values. Q10. Please point out the difference between SQL and MySQL.
Q11. Explain how to write SQL code to extract column mappings and store them into a final table? Recommended Reading: Power BI vs Tableau - Find Your Perfect Match for a BI Tool Microsoft Excel Interview Questions For Business AnalystMicrosoft Excel is a popular tool among business analysts for analyzing databases and drawing insightful conclusions that assist in decision making. This section will teach you how to excel at answering business analyst interview questions that will test a candidate’s analytical skills in MS Excel. Q1. What is the order of mathematical operations that are followed in MS Excel? MS Excel follows the order denoted by the PEMDAS acronym for performing mathematical operations. PEMDAS is an abbreviation for Parentheses, Exponents, Multiplication, Division, Addition, Subtraction. Q2. What are macros in MS Excel? A Macro in MS Excel is a set of operations or a single operation that one can execute as many times as one wants. One can save macros and name them as per their choice. Macros are extremely useful as they save their users time in performing repetitive tasks. Q3. How are SUBSTITUTE and REPLACE functions used differently?
Q4. Is it possible to use pivot tables for filtering data? Yes, one can use pivot tables for filtering data in MS Excel as per their requirements. All they have to do is keep the field that you want to use for filtering data. After that, go to the ‘Analyze’ button in the menu bar and choose ‘Insert Slicer’ option. Next, select the field you want to generate slices for, and press OK. Now, you will see the option of choosing items that you want to display in the pivot table. That’s all. Here is a sample video by Microsoft that will help you understand how to filter data using pivot tables. Q5. Describe the steps of creating a dropdown list in MS Excel.
Senior Business Analyst Interview QuestionsThis section contains those interview questions and answers for business analyst jobs that are usually asked for someone who has been a business analyst before and understands the role thoroughly. The questions for such candidates are usually aimed at understanding the behavioral aspects of the candidates and their ability to handle difficult situations. These questions do not have a fixed answer and are based on a candidate’s experience. Therefore, this section will give you a general overview of how to respond to such questions and excel in an interview. Q1. How do you plan to deal with a difficult stakeholder? This question aims to test your ability to handle a conflicting situation and come up with relevant suggestions. You can display your problem-solving approach here by explaining s situation where you took such a situation in the past. Q2. Which business analyst tools do you prefer to use for enhancing your efficiency? Through this question, the hiring manager would want to know how aware you are of the widely used tools in the industry. They usually expect you to have had hands-on experience with popular Business Analysis tools. If you aren’t that aware of such tools, it would be good to first work on a few projects that will help you polish your skills in this domain. Q3. How would you respond to a situation where a delay in work completion affected business processes? This is one of the most common business analyst behavioral interview questions asked in a senior business analyst interview. The idea is to understand how well a candidate can handle delays and devise a business growth plan. It would be nice if you could highlight your experience in managing such a situation previously. Additionally, you can highlight your time management skills to suggest how you usually avoid delays. Q4. So far in your career as a business analyst, what is the most challenging problem you solved? This question is the perfect opportunity for you to showcase your talent and skills in overcoming challenging situations. You are expected to explain how your personality and skills truly complement a senior business analyst’s role and how you have utilized them to figure out your way of solving complex problems. Q5. How do you go about convincing a company about adopting new business methodologies? Here you must reflect on your communication skills and your capability of communicating a business idea and its implementation. Talk about how you are interested in testing newer methodologies and analyzing how they benefit a business. Amazon Business Analyst Interview QuestionsQ1. Share an instance where you worked with an extensive dataset. Q2. Describe when you performed predictive analytics over a dataset, and the conclusions escalated a business’ growth. Q3. Share your experience of handling a complex interaction with a senior stakeholder. Q4. Why do you want to work at Amazon? Salesforce Business Analyst Interview QuestionsQ1. How is Salesforce able to track sales? Q2. Share your views on enterprise resource planning (ERP) system upgrades. Q3. What do you know about standard and custom object records in Salesforce? Q4. What do you think would be the best practice tips and advice to keep clean data in Salesforce? Q5. As a business analyst, what criteria do you follow for describing a good quality requirement? Data Analytics Projects Ideas for Business AnalystYou have gone through some of the top business analyst interview questions in this blog. Apart from knowing these questions, a business analyst is expected to work on a variety of technologies. These usually include artificial intelligence-based skills as well. IIf you are interested in developing your expertise in that domain and want to work on business analytics projects that help you develop skills on big data and analytics from scratch, check out the projects from the ProjectPro repository. We have end-to-end solutions for industry-relevant projects on Data Science and Big Data that you can customize as per your needs to solve a business problem. What questions are asked in a business intelligence interview?Interview Questions for BI Consultants:. What is your preferred visualization tool to use for presentations? ... . What are some unique business insights you've drawn from previous projects? ... . Why do you think BI is important for companies today? ... . How would you use incomplete data sets in your visualizations?. What are the 10 most common interview and answers?10 most common interview questions and answers. Tell me about yourself.. What attracted you to our company?. Tell me about your strengths.. Tell me about your strengths.. Where do you see yourself in five years?. Tell me about a time where you encountered a business challenge?. What are the five questions of business intelligence?5 Key Business Intelligence Questions to Ask Solution Providers.... Can your BI tool scale with my business?. Can you provide customer recommendations?. Is there a support package included? What does it include?. What is the total cost of ownership (TCO)?. How long does deployment take?. What are the 7 most common interview questions and answers pdf?7 most common interview questions. Where do you see yourself in five years? ... . What are your strengths/weaknesses? ... . Why should we hire you? ... . Tell me about yourself / your past work experience. ... . Why do you want to work for us? ... . What are your salary expectations? ... . What skills or experience will help you succeed in this role?. |