Key FP&A Interview Questions to Master

And relax, you’ll do well if you prepare and are confident in your abilities. But, even if you don’t, this will help you grow personally and be better in future interviews. Remember, only 20% of candidates receive job offers after interviews (1 in 5 succeed), so you're not alone in facing challenges.

You’ve finally polished off your resume, added relevant skills and secured that interview opportunity with the company you’re eyeing. The next step is to prepare… and prepare well!

How exactly do you prepare for a job in this finance space? More importantly, what role are you targeting? If it's a Financial Planning Analyst role, you're getting ready for an intellectually challenging position in finance. Use your skills to help companies achieve new growth and position yourself for more senior roles in FP&A.

What is FP&A?

Before we can get started on how to nail the interview, it’s important that you fully know what FP&A managers do and how they function on a finance team. An FP&A manager is a type of financial advisor that helps with budgeting, forecasting, and financial modeling.

As a jobseeker, it’s essential that you know the principles of FP&A so you can help senior management with decision making and goal setting. By improving cash flow management, uncovering new opportunities, and creating strategic financial modeling and plans, FP&A professionals are able to help companies improve their bottom line from a more strategic perspective.

Key FP&A Interview Questions

1. Technical FP&A Interview Questions

1. Explain the Three Financial Statements
(One or two paragraphs providing the importance and how to connect them)

2. How Do You Model Revenues?
(Brief explanation of bottom-up, top-down, and year-over-year)

3. Rolling Forecast Essentials
(Paragraph on best practices)

2. Behavioral Interview Questions

1. Handling Stakeholder Disagreements

2. Presenting Complex Data to Non-Finance Teams

3. Overcoming Challenges Under Tight Deadlines. Learn more about this one here.

Interview Secured, Now What Do You Do?

Preparation starts with your understanding of the company and how your skill set can be the ideal mix with their core values. The most effective way to learn about a company is by doing your due diligence. Research the company’s financial reports that are published for public consumption, read their blogs, and subscribe to their email list to see firsthand how the company communicates their vision and ideals to their consumers.

The day before your job interview, go through the information you researched one last time. Go over some of the key elements of the company:

What does the company shine at?
What areas do you think financial planning can aid them in growing?
What is the company’s reputation like within the industry and community?
Who is the CFO and what senior management would you be reporting to? Also consider CFO expectations to prepare for leadership demands.

Your goal is to be able to clearly communicate that you appreciate the opportunity. The best way to showcase that is by revealing the information you’ve learned about the company. Rehearse some material and sample answers to ease any nerves.

You don't want to go into the interview sounding like a robot either, but having some indication of what you want to say can help you communicate more clearly. Before meeting the interviewer, prepare a few sample answers to common questions so you feel prepared going into the conversation. As is the case with any interview, it is vital that you dress for success. Look into the company’s dress policy and respect that policy.

Now that you know the most popular FP&A interview questions asked for this role, the next step is to identify the proper answers. When you are properly prepared, the way you answer these questions can provide you the ammunition to get the job.

A Deeper Dive into Some Key Questions

1. Can you explain financial statements and why they help our company?

This question gives the interviewee an insight into what they need to know so that you have a grasp on the job requirements. Understanding the balance sheet means knowing how to identify assets, liabilities, and shareholders equity at a specific point in time. The financial statement outlines companies expenses and revenues over the said time frame, which could be broken into quarters or yearly.

When looking for accurate, operating, investing, and financial activities over a time period like, you would look at the cash flow statement. These three key financial statements show the complete picture of a company’s financial health, it will be your job to diagnose these statements.

2. Can you explain the difference between budgeting & forecasting?

In an interview for a FP&A role, they will want to know if you understand the difference between forecasting and budgeting. Answering this correctly is important. Budgeting is based on strategic planning for the future, while forecasting creates an estimation for what will happen to your company financially over a specific time frame. In most cases budgeting is a collaborative effort, meant to be set once a year unless it’s a rolling budget.

A forecast takes incoming data and creates an approximate expectation of what will happen as a result of the new data. A forecast is typically updated every quarter.

3. How do you model revenues for a company?

One of the more common questions we found, and it offers you the ability to really dive into your knowledge pool. After taking a look at the company’s current models, the recruiter would likely want you to explain the different methods to use in order to forecast revenues. As a financial planning analyst you should have a technical grasp on the three most used approaches which are:

A bottom-up approach which starts directly with individual products/services, estimating average prices/fees per product or service and then it looks at the growth rates.
A top-down approach starts by analyzing the overall market size, estimating the company’s market share, and then translating that into revenue.
The year-over-year approach involves taking last year’s revenue and increasing it or decreasing it by a particular percentage.

These are some of the core FP&A interview questions asked but are not all that you should know. Understanding a rolling budget or your knowledge of operating expense and revenue models are key to showcase your ability to do the job and that you possess the skills and knowledge to be effective at the position.

In conclusion, the process to prepare for an interview to get the job starts with knowing the company, knowing yourself, and showing your ability to communicate the information you have learned and accumulated can help that company grow. Alongside that, you will want to know and have feedback on the salary expectations according to the entry level and the company size.

Possessing a true growth mindset will set you apart from others interviewing for the same position.

FP&A Tools and Tech: Good to Have Skills

Spreadsheets, financial modeling software, analytics/BI platforms, and automation tools are essential for modern FP&A teams. Mastering these helps you boost efficiency, improve accuracy, and deliver strategic insights that drive better decision-making.

With Abacum, we empower finance teams of high-growth tech companies to become true strategic partners in the organization by driving time-to-insight with powerful automation and seamless collaboration.