Tips for Business Intelligence Interviews

So, you’ve just had that exciting call to let you know you’ve been invited for an interview for a role in Business Intelligence?

Here are some of the definitions and concepts you might want to review before your interview:

Business intelligence (BI) can be defined as an umbrella term that includes the applications, infrastructure and tools, and best practices that enable access to and analysis of information to improve and optimize decisions and performance. (Gartner IT Glossary).

The role of Business intelligence (BI) is to represent the tools and systems that play a key role in the strategic planning process within a corporation. These BI systems allow a company to gather, store, access, and analyze corporate data to aid in decision-making. (Webopedia Definition).

Business Intelligence (BI) is important since company data can indicate the viability of new products and help in the planning of future growth. Hence data can help maximize revenues and reduce costs. A business intelligence solution helps in producing accurate reports by extracting data directly from your data source.

Following that, you should be able to answer these questions:

• Do you understand what Business Intelligence is? Would you be able to define the discipline? Why do organisations ask for BI services and what is the value BI can add to an organisation change?
• Are you able to understand and explain the concept of business lifecycle events? Can you demonstrate where a business event starts in organisations, business units, departments, and how does it end? Are you able to derive the underlying processes per lifecycle events?
• Do you understand how data, technology, and processes can support each lifecycle event, and how will these be used to derive real insights and value through your event journey?
• Are you able to conceptually understand and visualise demand changes? Thus, understanding why you are doing a piece of work on any demand stream. Do you understand what the downstream and upstream impacts are?
• Can you demonstrate which methodologies, tools, and processes can be used to apply on BI demand streams?
• Can you demonstrate how to derive a data model? Can you define key points on lifecycle events to be used in your data model? Can you explain how your data model translates to a star schema?
• Are you able to demonstrate how you would introduce your data to the changing environment technically? Can you explain what a data warehouse is? What is a data lake?
• Can you explain the difference between a dimension, measure, and fact?

Do you think you need what is required? Good luck with the interview! We’re sure you’re going to rock it. If you’re looking to apply for a BI role, get in touch with Moyo Talent Solutions, our talent specialists have a range of roles to match your skills. Or if you’re looking to improve your skills, we have a range of business and data-related training for you to choose from.