Top Business Analyst Interview Questions and Answers

As BA's or newbies, whoever would like to improve or start their career in BA profession...this is to help you all with some sample BA interview questions with answers so that you can be more prepared for your interview with confidence 💯

So let's have a look at some sample questions and answers I came up with based on my experiences 😊

1. Give us an introduction about yourself ?

The very first question is a very popular and a simple one…sort of like an ice breaking question. This is the chance where you can give a good impression about yourself. Always remember…first impression is very important when it comes to an interview.So when you’re answering this make it short…but detailed out all the important points as in, Your name, your current position or the status, where are you from and your current company…where did you graduate….may be one or two of your hobbies or interested areas…you don’t have to be over smart in here because this is just a regular question.

2. Why do you want to become a Business Analyst and what brought you to apply for the position ?

This is a tricky question! 😏

In here you need to highlight the importance of being a business analyst. For an example how it can add value to the project or the team and how you are suitable to play a role like that with the skills you have.

• Problem Solving
• Understanding clients and their needs
• New challenge
• Be the go-to person of the team or the backbone of the team

Tell them that it’s being your career goal for many years and you are passionate about the job and the role.When they ask why you applied for the position, tell them that you have heard about the company ( do your homework) and how you think that this company will enrich your career goals. Tell them that you need to become a successful person in the field and you think that this job/position is the best fit for that.

3. In your opinion what are the key strength a BA should have or what do you see as the key skills of a Business Analyst ?

At least try to point out 5 key skills a BA should have because trust me you gonna need even more skills when it comes to the real deal.😀

• Customer Service skills
• Strategic thinking approach
• Good communication skills
• Collaborating with other employees and colleagues
• Analytical skills
• Leadership skills
• Customer oriented
• Ability to drive and adapt to the changes

4. What are your weaknesses ?

This is again a very famous question.

Here just say we all have weaknesses and what matters is how you work towards to make those weaknesses into your strength and by the result you can say that you have succeeded.Just don’t jump the gun and say “ I don’t have any weaknesses” or “ I am a very selfish person, emotional person” likewise.😐 

5. Tell me about a challenging project you worked recently and how did you handle that ?

If you are a fresh graduate then you could relate this to one of your university projects.

Here remember to give a brief introduction of the project you involved in and tell them a challenge you or your team had to face and MOST IMPORTANTLY TELL THEM HOW YOU HANDLED THAT.

Example : I worked in ABC project which is a revenue forecasting system for ABC company which has more than 1000 users during my tenure in ZYX company or in my last project.In their clients aren’t very detailed of how they want to have the presentation layer being implemented and the deadlines were very strict. So we had to do a quick market research and see the best ways of presenting the information to the customer. We did a sample mock-up screen and presented a working prototype using 123 tool and then they asked us to do quite a few modification which were alright because we used a UI tool do the prototype which took like 6,8 hours.When we finally have the exact information of how the client wants the data we gave it to the development team and the end result and the feedback were very good.👌

6. What is your typical approach to a project ? 

Have to start with understanding the needs, then identifying stakeholders, planning the project (schedule, budget, determining gaps between “as is” and “to be” processes, eliciting and documenting requirements, Differentiate functional Vs Nonfunctional, Design and development, Testing, UAT, production and maintenance.

7. How much you involving when it comes to design and testing phases ?

This is a question where you can get icing on the cake 🎂. 

Tell them you are willing to do testing (BA testing) or help with the design if the project demands it because it can help to deliver a quality product.

8. What are the documents you create?

Business requirements document, Functional requirement document, User stories, Use case,Report definition documents, Bus matrices, Measure definition document, Data dictionary. (These are only if you are a BI Business Analyst)

9. What are the BA techniques you have worked with ?

• Brainstorming
• Document analysis
• Focus group
• Interface analysis
• Interviews
• Workshops
• Reverse engineering
• Surveys
• User task analysis
• Process mapping
• Observation/job shadowing
• Design thinking

Have to and must tell at least 6 out of these....Also talk about the BABOK(Business Analyst Body Of Knowledge) because that’s like a bible for BA's and you have to know it. 

10. As a business analyst, what tools, you think are more helpful ?

• Visio 
• Balsamiq - This is a tool for mock-ups and wire-frames
• Bizagi
• Jira
• Team Foundation Server (TFS)
• Microsoft package
• Sparx EA 

11. What do you do when two stakeholders have conflicting requirements ?

This is purely to test the negotiation skills of yours.In here be tricky…

Tell them that you consider both the requirements from the clients because when it comes to solution the problem you need to cover every possible aspect of the requirement.Then finally come up with the best solution which can solve both the problems and let the clients know that you considered both the ideas and requirement and was very helpful.

12. How do you manage frequent changes in the requirement ?

When they ask this question…let them feel that you are already facing this issue with your current project or you have faced this in your previous projects. Answer this by telling what are the options or strategies you used to handle those. Make it personal... 😊

Examples:

• Work with the project's stakeholder during early stage to find out how frequently the requirements can change so that an alternative test strategies and test plan can be in advance.
• The use of the prototyping is the best option if possible, it will help customer feel sure of their requirements and minimized changes.
• Try to move the new requirements in the Phase 2 while keep the original requirements in Phase

13. How do you deal with the technical team when explaining the requirement ?

This is totally to measure your people or the team skills. You have to be very smart in here.Tell them by nature a BA has to be a people person and you have to act as the bridge b/w the client and the technical team. Tell them how you like to work as teams…and how you welcome their ideas as well. This one also tries to answer them using your experience. How is your experience in working as teams and how’s their response towards you. One important thing, try to get as many recommendation from your work buddies for your hard work. So when it comes to a question like this you can always say, refer my LinkedIn profile there you can see the recommendation I received from my team.

14. How technical are you ?

Don’t try to be over smart. If you are a technical BA then sell it. If not tell them currently you are not much of a technical person but willing to learn new things or like to experiment. 

15. What modeling techniques are you aware of / have you used in the past ?

Activity diagrams, use case, process flows, ERD, Domain modelling, collaboration diagrams

There can be more and more BA domain related questions which you can easily google and fine. But if you can answer the above questions without a hesitate I think you will do fine job in the interview ✌