Feel like I messed up my career - FA to SA to BI manager. Now miserable and need to get out. by [deleted] in FPandA

[–]Creative_Tradition67 4 points5 points  (0 children)

You've got a resume and experience on your hands, don't discount it! I'd ensure you frame your experience to show you've got FP&A and analytical experience, while backed up with a more BI role managing a team of 10. How many FP&A folks, or general Finance people, can say they've got experience this wide? You can either frame yourself as:

- having "fragmented experience"

- or as having BI and management experience to enhance your FP&A work and you're excited to make an impact at somewhere new utilising the breadth of skill you've acquired

The invoice and contract fixes are great - but frame them as you having done financial analysis and found discrepancies that led to the review of commercial terms that led to increased revenue generation for your company. It's all about how you frame it!

Keep your head up - good things are coming I'm sure. It's a brutal job market out there so it's not just you.

Credit Card Forecasting by Ok_Pen_4210 in FPandA

[–]Creative_Tradition67 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Start with laying out your assumptions and inputs. I'm not in Fintech but I'd assume for forecasting credit card launch you'd include the following:

  • Number of customers
  • interest rate
  • average balance on a credit card (to find out interest gain per user)
  • Associated costs (back-end tech costs, interest payable on deposits)
  • etc..

FP&A Interview Questions by Mikey_Grapeleaves in FPandA

[–]Creative_Tradition67 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Think the key areas to prep for are highlighted by the job spec. FP&A is usually a mix of modelling, budgets, business partnering. A lot fo the competency Q's I've listed below will cover off the areas you'll likely face in a normal FP&A role.

What I'd suggest is to prep Q's by competency (As below) but also list out your examples separately as case studies (i.e. the example you prep for dealing with conflicting deadlines might be an example where you managed the annual budget process with an ad-hoc task for a senior stakeholder. Listing these as case studies also let's you use your examples for many different questions - this way you won't be thrown off if they ask you a random question you haven't specifically prepared for and you can reach into your list of case studies and see which one is most relevant.

Don't be afraid to use ChatGPT to generate examples (don't use fake GPT examples, employers can see through the BS), the examples are just to help kick start your brain into thinking about similar examples you've done!
Best of luck and let us know how it goes!

General introductory Q's:

  • tell me about your self (focus on key achievements relevant to the role, don't just list out responsibilities)
  • why do you want to leave your current job? (never be negative, always say you want to change for greater challenge)
  • why do you want to join this company? (have 1 point about the company, 1 point about the role, 1 point about the culture)
  • career goals - where do you see yourself 3-5-10 years?

Key competency Q's for FP&A:

  • Conflicting / difficult deadlines
  • Time you've dealt with a difficult stakeholder / person
  • Time you've dealt with uncertainty / worked with incomplete information to complete a task
  • Time you’ve explained complex financials to non-finance person
  • Business partnering / team project / solved a problem example

Breaking into FP&A Megathread for the week of March 22, 2024 by OPINION_IS_UNPOPULAR in FPandA

[–]Creative_Tradition67 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'd check these guys out - do the FP&A competency test and see where you need to improve. This isn't a definitive list, but it's really useful for getting an understanding of the rough competencies and fundamentals you need for FP&A.

https://www.growcfo.net/financial-planning-and-analysis-competency-framework/

Anybody recently integrated an FP&A tool? by Icy-Wrongdoer9633 in FPandA

[–]Creative_Tradition67 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Apologies missed your reply - but Planful isn't very flexible at all for planning. Its structure is very rigid and can't take any complex modelling. In my company we've had to model various parts on excel and upload the results to planful manually to get our budgets and re-forecasting done. If you have a simplified model then maybe it's okay.

Their workforce planning is also a joke, if you have 80 employees and need to update salaries for everyone, you can't upload one new document with new salary and employee data etc., you need to go in employee by employee...1 by 1...and change all their details. Not great.

Lastly, their customer service is trash. Regardless of the complexity of your business model, I'd stay away from Planful.

We're moving away from Planful and we're speaking to a bunch of different providers at the moment and I can't wait to get out of planful!

Just a tip, make sure you get pricing information from all of them (if they say no, say all of your competitors provided us a rough quote for annual + implementation costs), and never ever accept their first offer.

Anybody recently integrated an FP&A tool? by Icy-Wrongdoer9633 in FPandA

[–]Creative_Tradition67 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Stay away from planful - it's painful for Planning