How to Answer Business Analyst Interview Questions

The business analyst pre-interview questions

Prepare for the business analyst interview with these tips on how to answer business analyst interview questions.
This article will give you some common business analyst interview questions and suggest the best answers  to help you in your business analyst job search to ace the interview and land that job!

The process to find a job can be tedious. Before you even land an interview, you have to answer pre-interview questions. Pre-interview questions are questions recruiters and hiring managers often ask to screen you before an actual interview. Here are the common questions you’ll likely be asked if applying for a business analyst job:

1. Why are you looking for a new job?

This  pre-interview question is almost always going to be asked for any job, even in the actual interview they will repeat this question, so you should prepare a good answer for it.  It’s vital in how to answer business analyst interview questions. Here’s some situations and the best answers for each:

You are getting laid off – It may not seem like it, but this is actually a great reason to be looking for a new job.  You can give a short explanation of your circumstances and be honest and brief about your lay off and that will be a good answer for looking for a new job.

You hate your  current job – This is a little more difficult to finesse.  You clearly cannot disclose that you hate your current job or your micromanaging boss. You have to frame this in the context of learning something new. You can say you want a change of industry or that you want to learn new tools to advance in your career. if you work for a smaller company, you can say that there are limited growth opportunities because of the size of the company etc… Obviously do not hint anything negative about your current job or previous employers.

You were fired –  Ouch! This is also not something you want to disclose up front. You will have to find a way to be truthful but not hurt your chances. There are always multiple things going on at any given point in your life so if you got fired in the middle of any event in your life, you can point to that instead. So if you were moving when you got fired you can point to the commute, for example. You can also refer to taking time off to spend with family for a specific reason. For example: if you had any major life events during that time like marriage,  the birth of a new child, a death in the family you can make that the subject etc… Don’t ever lie though. Instead, highlight the good things that did happen but avoid saying “I got fired”.

2. Tell me about your current job

This pre-interview question is to assess if your current responsibilities align with the new job opening you are applying for.  This is another very important response in how to answer business analyst interview questions. If you have the ability to get the job description beforehand,  then you can tailor your answers accordingly, but if not, be as honest and descriptive as you can.

As a business analyst you typically want to emphasize requirements elicitation,  process improvements, process designs, diagraming and visualization abilities, presentation and documentations skills, user acceptance testing  and any work you do that liaise with QAs, developers, product owners, project managers and clients.

3. What kinds of tools do you use?

Asking this pre-interview question for business analyst job is another way to screen your proficiency with the industry standard technologies and tools. Don’t be afraid to mention even tools that seem obvious. For example you can say Microsoft suite of products such as Word, Excel and Powerpoint. You can mention these other tools as well:

•  Visio ( for process flows)
• LucidChart    ( for online process flows)
• Rational Rose (for UML diagrams)
•  Jira (for user stories)
•  TFS (for requirements management)
• HP Quality Center (for testing)
• Slack  (team collaboration tool)
• Trello (kanban board)
•  Balsamiq (for building wireframes)
•  Proto.io ( for building prototypes
• InVision (collaborative prototyping tool)

And don’t forget your plain old notebook – which is a tool too!

4. Agile vs Waterfall? – which one do you prefer?

This is a great business analyst  pre-interview question and helps the recruiter to know if you understand the industry terms. It is a great pre-interview question for you to demonstrate that you are a qualified candidate for the job.

The best way to answer this is to be honest. If you have worked in both then you can say that you are comfortable in both and then  highlight the merits of each. If you do have a strong preference then you can say that as well, but be ready to defend why.

For waterfall, you can say that some projects work better under waterfall where there is a need for heavy documentation and a lot of upfront planning. Waterfall is best for companies that do not have rapid changes, for example: transportation, railways,  mining, etc..

For agile, you can mention that it is more suitable for companies in industries that experience rapid change such as technology companies.  Then you can get into requirements versus user stories and the advantages of each. This will demonstrate to the recruiter that you know the industry jargons and that you are verse enough to express opinions about them.

 5. How technical are you?

This business analyst pre-interview question is designed to assess the type of business analyst you are. Are you a strategic business analyst? a technical business analyst? or both? Are you only comfortable dealing with business-level problems only? or are you willing to get technical to translate across to the developer level?  That’s what they are really asking. They want to know how well you can communicate to development teams. Its an assessment of business system analyst role versus strict business analyst but recruiters often don’t make that distinction.

This is also very important in how to answer business analyst interview questions.

You can answer this question by being as truthful as possible. If you have ever coded, then you can mention that you are technical to that level. If not, then you can state that you understand how coding works and therefore you can translate requirements to technical teams to enable them to best understand the requirements or user stories. Say what’s true for you. You don’t have to write code to be a business analyst. Be honest and don’t lie.

6. What types of design documents have you created?

Hopefully you had been creating some documentation, user stories  and visualization diagrams in your prior role. This pre-interview question is to assess if you, as the business analyst have any concept of what diagrams and documents are to be produced in the role. Typically these documents include:

• Requirements documents (BRD)
• User stories
• UML diagrams
• Process flow diagrams
• Use case description and diagrams
• Feasibility studies
• Prototypes/ wireframes/mockups

7. What is your expected compensation?

A lot of people do not like this question, yet it is a very common pre-interview question that recruiters always ask. It’s purpose is to know how expensive you are and if your compensation salary is in the price range that they are willing to pay.

So  this is another important skill in how to answer business analyst interview questions. There are a few good ways to answer this question:

Answer directly  – Just tell them what you would like to make. Many people will tell you to always go high and you can negotiate but you have to be very careful not to be so high that you are no longer in the running. You can negotiate yourself out of a potential job by giving an amount too high upfront!

If you state a good price then you can  negotiate up later. You an point to vacation days and bonus and other things when you get the offer and if those are lacking then you can ask for more money. Just don’t be ridiculous with your pay expectation. Be careful not to price yourself out all together!

Answer indirectly – If you are new to the role or to the job market in the area, you can say that you are not sure what the going pay rate is for this area, however based on your research the national average is $X. Then you can say that you would expect to be payed in accordance with others in the similar role in the company or at least in line with the national average and that you would be ready to negotiate the exact salary when you get to learn more details of the job and get the job offer. This way you give them a figure but you don’t tie yourself to it.

Answer open-ended–  Another approach is to say  that you are not ready to state an amount just yet until you learn more details of the job and do some more research about the pay rate for that area. You can also ask if this job has a salary range and what that range is.

So those are the top 7 common business analyst pre-interview questions in my experience. If you know of any other  common pre-interview questions please let me know in the comments!

Find out about other business analyst soft skills and read  more about preparing for the business analyst interview in the article 7 Business Analyst Interview Questions and Answers. 

Good luck!