Shadowing Practice: 5 Entry-Level Accounting Interview Questions! - Learn English Speaking with Video

- Hey guys, welcome to another video.

Today we're talking about five frequently asked questions in accounting job interviews for entry level positions.

And entry level positions are those that require zero to two years of experience.

So this could be somebody who's fresh out of college, or maybe just an internship, or maybe have like one year of experience.

So that's the topic of this video today, so stick around.

And if you're new here, welcome.

My name is Bill Hanna and I'm the financial controller.

I've been in finance for the last 15 years, and I sat at both sides of the table, both as the job seeker and also the hiring manager So I have the advantage of having seeing it from both sides.

And in this video, I'm gonna give you the secret sauce or the things that I hear as a hiring manager

from a candidate that make me think right away that this is a person that I want to hire, and this is a person that I want to work with, so this is what we're going to cover in today's video.

Okay, so the way I want to do this is I'm going to cover the questions from one to five, from the easiest question to the most tricky question toward the end.

And for each question, I'm going to give you the standard answer that typically a hiring manager would want to hear.

But also, I'm going to give you that secret sauce or that extra something that when I hear as a hiring manager, I immediately think that this is somebody I want to hire.

This is somebody I want to work with.

And also, at the end of the video, I'm going to give you four keywords or four things

that you want to make sure you are saying during the interview as a candidate

that will make the hiring manager immediately realize that this is somebody that they want to hire immediately.

So, let's jump into today's video.

Okay, so question number one, and this is probably the easiest of the five questions.

make a good accountant.

And basically the hiring manager when they ask this question, they're looking for certain keywords, certain things that they have to hear in order for them to feel comfortable about the person they're interviewing.

And some of the keywords that you should be saying are detail oriented.

So obviously as an accountant, you'll be juggling many tasks and many different files of different formats.

you know, like Excel files, PDF files, also working with an accounting software as well.

So you need to be somebody who's detail -oriented in order to be a good accountant.

The second thing you should be mentioning is being objective.

So objective is a great thing to have as an accountant

because objectivity means that you're basing your opinion on facts or data and not just on your personal opinion.

So basically you need to be mentioning objectivity or being objective as a quality.

The other thing you should be mentioning is honesty or being honest.

Obviously honesty is needed for every career, not just accounting.

But it becomes crucially important with accounting because you need to be able to hire somebody who when they make a mistake, they'll own up to it and say it,

so that you can fix the situation quickly.

So honesty is another quality you should be mentioning.

And finally, you should be mentioning self -review.

Self -review is an important quality for accountants.

In general, it's important, but for accountant, it's very important because you need to be able to Review your work before you give it to your manager.

So basically when you have a task to complete you need to be able to do it

and then review it critically for spelling mistakes, numerical mistakes and the actual logic of the work to make sure that it's sound and and then once you've reviewed it, you give it to your manager.

But also for this question, if you really want to impress the hiring manager, you want to stress on another quality,

which is it's somebody who wants to help management by providing useful information, help management run the business.

And once the hiring manager realized that you can make the connection between the accounting function and running the business,

that will trigger another light bulb in their head to realize that this is somebody who's mature,

this is somebody who understands that business is run on the information provided by accounting.

And so this is another quality you want to mention.

So to summarize, detail -oriented, objective, honest, self -review, and someone who wants to help run the business by providing useful information.

Make sure to download our balance sheet metrics cheat sheet.

It's 100 % free and an amazing resource, especially if you're a financial professional, finance student, or into stock investing.

I'll leave a link in the description, so go ahead and check it out.

And again, it's 100 % free.

Okay, now question number two, and the question goes, "How has your education prepare you for a career in accounting?" And basically, with this question, for me as a hiring manager,

what I'm trying to gauge is that the ability for somebody to connect between the concepts that they studied in school, the hard concepts of accounting in school, and real life.

So basically, I want to hear that you're able to draw from the things that you studied in school, and bring that to real life.

So basically there are certain key phrases that when I hear makes me feel more comfortable.

And one of these phrases is that you learned in accounting to summarize the business transactions into financial statements.

to help run the business.

And so this is one thing, summarizing the business activity into financial statements.

The second thing is that you learn the five basic principles of accounting.

And the five basic principles of accounting is something that you want to brush up on and remember for the interview.

Those five basic principles of accounting are: Revenue recognition, which basically means which period to recognize the revenue based on a contract with the customer.

Second one is historical cost.

Historical cost means you record your expenses and assets at their historical costs.

Matching principle.

Matching principle typically means matching revenue with expenses in a particular period.

So if you have revenue, you need to be recording its cost of revenue and expenses in the same period.

The fourth principle is full disclosure, meaning you are disclosing all the information on the financial statements, including footnotes to the financial statements.

And finally, the final principle of accounting is objectivity.

Objectivity means that you are recording transactions on the books on the financial statements based on evidence.

not based on what you think should be booked.

It should be booked on a calculation, a memo, an invoice, or evidence to support that transaction.

So these are the five basic principles of accounting, really helpful to mention them in a job interview at any level, not just entry level, but these are always good to know.

The third thing you want to say for the question, what have you know, how has your education prepared you for a career in accounting is the double entry accounting.

So basically, you want to mention that you learned debits and credits, and you know how to record your debits and credits for the business transactions.

And if you that I have made on debits and credits.

I'm going to leave a link to it up here and in the description below.

Okay, so question number three and the question goes, what ERP program have you used in the past?

And ERP stands for Enterprise Resource Planning.

And basically it's a fancy expression for saying the accounting software that you're using.

And this could be anywhere from QuickBooks for smaller companies to maybe NetSuite for like, you know, slightly bigger companies all the way up to SAP for really big companies.

And basically what the interviewer is looking for here is that if you're fresh out of college, you obviously haven't used any ERP in the past.

Basically, you just want to say that you're aware of ERP and what it is, what it does, and that you at least have done maybe some research online.

Maybe you have watched a demo or two on YouTube on QuickBooks or in NetSuite.

Ideally, you want to research what this company is using as far as accounting package

and do some research on YouTube to learn a little bit more about that ERP system.

So basically, if you haven't used any, you should say that, but you should also say that you have done some research.

If you've used in the past some ERP system like QuickBooks or NetSuite, just talk about it briefly.

functions that you've used in the program, like accounts payable, accounts receivable, applying cash and all that kind of stuff and that's question number three.

Okay, so on to question number four and the question goes, how do you plan a large project to meet a deadline?

And basically this question here, when I ask this question, I'm trying to gauge the candidates ability to be organized.

Being organized is crucial in accounting.

And so basically what I'm looking for here is somebody who tells me how they manage to get to a deadline.

And so what you can do is mention if you're fresh out of school, you can mention how you met a deadline for a project, a big project for school.

And basically what I want to hear is that you want to work backward from a deadline and establish milestones.

And then for these milestones, you can create a checklist to meet each milestone, to meet the objective of each milestone.

And then ideally what you want to say, that will trigger in my head that you are the right candidate.

is if you say that you want to leave some time toward the end of the project for review.

Basically, you want to make sure that you're reviewing your work before you submit it, and so you leave a little cushion toward the end to review your work.

So that's it.

Basically, you want to say that you want to work backward from a deadline, create milestones for each milestone, create a checklist of all the things that need to happen for this milestone to be achieved,

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and that you leave some time toward the end for review to complete the project.

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And that's question number four.

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trickiest question out of all of these and you'll see why here in a second.

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Where do you see yourself in five years? and in 10 years. And basically

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when I ask this question as a hiring manager what I'm looking for is your ability to express yourself and be ambitious.

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You could say that in five years I'd like to be a junior controller

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and then in ten years I'd like to be a senior controller or a similar position,

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but I'm willing to do Whatever it takes to learn on the job and grow professionally to meet these ambitions.

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And for me This would be the kind of answer I'm looking for because it combines your ambition with being humble.

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You want to show that you're ambitious and hungry to grow in your career, but also you're humble and you realize that you have a lot to learn and grow professionally.

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And that's question number five.

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And as I promised you at the beginning of the video, I'm going to give you four key phrases

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that you want to make 100 % sure you're mentioning during the job interview that when I hear as a hiring manager, those key phrases.

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I immediately think that this is somebody that I want to work with.

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And those key phrases are.

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Key phrase number one is that you want to support management with information to be able to run the business.

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So basically you want to show the hiring manager that you understand

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that accounting is about providing information to management to run the business.

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So supporting the business with the right information is a key phrase number one.

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Number two key phrase or keyword is self -review.

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You want to mention the phrase or the expression self -review

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because basically that shows the hiring manager

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that you're someone who's going to be double checking their work

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and not just giving any work to their manager but correct and work that has been checked and reviewed.

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phrase that you want to make sure you mention the third key phrase

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or keyword you want to mention is checklist

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and basically as a hiring manager when I hear somebody

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that I'm interviewing that they work with checklist

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and basically I will realize immediately that they are organized

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and being organized is key to working in accounting

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so making checklist is something is a quality that I look for

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that someone always works with checklists

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so make sure to mention the keyword checklist in the interview keyword number four you want to mention

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is fast learner because basically you're not really interested in hiring somebody who's going to be slow

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and learning but you want to mention fast learner because

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that will concrete the idea in the interviewer's head that you're somebody who's committed to learning on the job and learning fast.

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So you wanna make sure to mention these four keywords, or key phrases during your accounting job interview.

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And that's it for this video.

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If you enjoyed it, give us a thumbs up.

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And if you haven't subscribed to the channel, go ahead and subscribe now.

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If you wanna give me some ideas for future videos to make, use the comment section below, and I'll see you in the next video.

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you

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What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

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