Business Analyst Flashcards
Tell me about yourself
Did my bcomm at Queen’s out east and signed on full time at Cenovus after a summer term. Here at Cenovus I went through the rotation program with roles in audit, tax and FP&A while completing my CPA designation. I realized pretty early on that I was more interested in finance and signed up for the CFA program. I’ve currently passed all three levels.
I’m super excited to be applying to work in your team because
I’m looking for a more challenging role where I can make an impact and see tangible results from the work I do. I have a good understanding of accounting but honestly, I get frustrated with the nature of the work sometimes. I’ve always enjoyed working with spreadsheets and analyzing investment opportunities so this role would be a great fit. I heard great things from Josh about the role and how I would be exposed all the exciting initiatives happening at the company. He also mentioned that you are focused on development in your team and ensuring that we have meaningful work which are extremely important to me.
what career accomplishment are you most proud of
i. I’m most proud of the time I was able to decrease the time it took to perform a monthly process by 87% through automation. The initial process required data to be extracted and manually manipulated to arrive at the right numbers. This included deleting certain lines, copy and pasting specific data, finding specific values and replacing it with something else. Every time I performed this process, I had to follow a long list of steps which were extremely time consuming and often resulted in rework if a step was missed.
ii. To improve the process, I started trying to find ways to automate the process in excel with advanced formulas but quickly realized that I would probably need to start coding macros to accomplish this. At the time, I had never built a macro before or even went into the Visual Basic application before. I searched around for courses on building macros and signed up for one right away and used what I learned to build a macro to automate the process. To make sure I still got the desired results, I tested the macro alongside the original process for three periods and everything worked perfectly.
iii. Now instead of all the manual data manipulation required, all I had to do now was import the data and run the macro by pressing a button. So it was extremely successful and
what are your strengths
a. Working with others and can get along with anyone
b. I love working with spreadsheets and analyzing investment opportunities
c. Quick learner and willing to work hard every single day to make sure I end the day a better version of myself.
what are your weaknesses
a. Not as much modelling experience in my professional roles but I have been doing it outside of work. I’m also a quick learner so I’m sure I can pick it up quickly.
b. Type A personality so sometimes I get impatient and frustrated if things aren’t happening at the pace I want them to be. To help with this, I now meditate and exercise daily.
c. Net working follow up, get better at staying in touch with friends and peers
tell me about a time when you had to manage a heavy workload
a. Earlier this year, one of my coworkers was let go unfortunately. For some background, I’m responsible for the Foster Creek asset while she was responsible for the Christina Lake asset.
b. Following her departure, I agreed to cover both assets for April and May so we did not have to hire anyone to cover while we were waiting for another team member to return from family leave. This effectively doubled my workload for the two months.
c. First, I created checklists for both properties organized by due date to ensure I didn’t miss any deliverables. Next, I prioritized these tasks by due date. I also enlisted the help of another team member and delegated tasks to him based on what he was able to handle and performed the more complicated ones myself. I was able to successfully complete all deliverables by the required dates while providing insightful analysis for management and external reporting.
walk me through your resume
1
how do you identify opportunities and make decisions
- First step before trying to identify any opportunities for me is to develop a good understanding of the market. This would include researching and learning all I can about a certain topic, what the best practices are and what our peers are doing.
- Next I would spend some time to get organized and quiet my mind to think of any opportunities using all of the knowledge I developed in the research phase.
- Once I have a few ideas, I would bounce these ideas off my peers and get their thoguths and insights. These discussions will allow me to quickly identify any flaws or new ideas.
- Decision making: Identify the problem that we are trying to solve and all of the alternatives. Identify if there are any specific make or break criteria that would disqualify any specific alternatives and remove these. From remaining alternatives perform quantitative and qualitative analysis and rank them from best to worst.
- Qualitative would be things like whether it matches our values and other things like ESG targets.
- Quantitative: determine if the project adds economic value. This would mean looking at returns (IRR, NPV9, PIR9 – profitability index ratio) and growth (FFF)
how has teamwork enhanced your ability to accomplish goals
a. Earlier this year, one of my coworkers was let go unfortunately. For some background, I’m responsible for the Foster Creek asset while she was responsible for the Christina Lake asset.
b. Following her departure, I agreed to cover both assets for April and May so we did not have to hire anyone to cover while we were waiting for another team member to return from family leave. This effectively doubled my workload for the two months.
c. First, I created checklists for both properties organized by due date to ensure I didn’t miss any deliverables. Next, I prioritized these tasks by due date. I also enlisted the help of another team member and delegated tasks to him based on what he was able to handle and performed the more complicated ones myself. I was able to successfully complete all deliverables by the required dates while providing insightful analysis for management and external reporting.
Tell me about a time when you had to explain a complex topic to…
ERP
describe a time when you made a mistake
a. Part of my current accountabilities include preparing quarterly income analysis. This report analyzes quarter and ytd variances. When I first moved into this role, we had just acquired the Conoco Phillips assets so our reporting was affected by changing working interest during this time. Since it was my first time preparing this report, I did not take into account this change. Luckily my supervisor caught the mistake and questioned me on it. Reflecting on this, I realized that the reason I had made the mistake was because I did not have a full understanding of the report and was just following a list of steps provided by my predecessor. From then onward, I always try to understand why and how we are performing a process instead of just following a list of steps.
describe a time when you had to work with someone whose personality or work style is very different from yours.
a. In my current role, I am constantly working with teams in the field and engineers who often have very different personalities and work styles.
b. One specific example was two years back when I was still supporting Christina Lake. There was a turnaround scheduled and I was working with the Operations teams to come up with cost estimates for the work that was scheduled. As we were going through the process, I realized that the estimates used for our accruals were significantly higher than what was being used for forecasting purposes.
c. Upon further discussion, I discovered that the Operations team was including a buffer in the estimate numbers in case costs came in higher than they expected. I immediately set up a meeting with the Operations team and presented on what the accrual process should be and why estimates should not include buffers.
d. I find the best way to communicate with others is to be patient, honest and non-confrontational. By communicating this way the teams were a lot more receptive to my message.
- Describe a time when you knew the outcome that you needed to achieve but had no clear way of getting there. PROBLEM SOLVING
a. AG Sale. We were asked to do a intercompany disposition and acquisition of the Athabasca Gas property from Cenovus Energy Inc (211) to FCCL Partnership (273). There were no clear instructions on what has to be done and I had never done a transaction like this before.
b. To start I reached out to my network to see if there were any recent intercompany transactions that was done so I can model the process on that. No point recreating new processes if it was already done.
c. I found one that was slightly similar but was a NRP project so did nto have as many complication. Nevertheless it was a good starting point to determine which teams will be impacted.
d. Built a checklist of all the teams that will be impacted and ..
Describe your leadership style
see myself as a fair but strict leader. I would give my team autonomy to accomplish goals how they want but expect a high level of performance in the end product.
b. I would be open to criticism and lead by example while showing empathy to my team.
What is the biggest risk in oil and gas right now?
Short term: Biggest risk in the market I believe is on the demand side with regards to COVID-19. If case counts worldwide increases significantly forcing government to shut down cities, oil demand may drop significantly. On the flip side, this is where the biggest opportunity is as well. If vaccination rates keep increasing and cases are kept under control, we’ll see robust demand from air travel, vehicle use and just general economic activity. Another thing I am keeping an eye on is the winter and whether demand will increase based on temperatures. I don’t see too many risks on the supply side. Despite pressures from Biden and other world leaders, I don’t think OPEC will be forced into increasing production in a meaningful way. The industry also has been underinvesting in long term growth projects so there isn’t too big of a risk for oversupply.
LT: ESG and branding
- A time when I demonstrated strong verbal and written communication skills, tailored to specific audience.
a. Quarterly, I prepare the income analysis and performance management reports for Foster Creek. These reports are used for both management reporting and external reporting. I also attended monthly property meetings where I discuss Foster Creek performance compared to budget and prior periods.
b. While preparing the reports and attending meetings, I always catered my communication based on the audience I was presenting to. Certain reports would go to senior management while others to the operations teams so the level of detail I presented varied widely.
c. I ensured my communication was clear and succinct while emphasizing the key drivers impacting performance for the period. This was extremely important as the information is used for decision making and feeds into external reports such as the MD&A.
