This PDF contains a list of business analyst interview questions and answers.

You will
find it helpful if you are a hiring manager who is looking for business analyst questions
to ask during an interview and also if you are a job seeker who is interested in business
analyst jobs.

Role of a Business Analyst: Skills and Opportunities

The role of a business analyst is not a single-dimensional one. The skills needed to become a
successful business analyst span a broad spectrum of categories. Here are some of the key
skills that a business analyst aspirant must possess to become a successful business analyst.
● Commercial understanding of different businesses.
● Excellent interpersonal and communication skills.
● Decision-making and problem-solving skills.
● Expertise in organization and time management aspects of tasks.
● Ability to analyze huge datasets.
● Good at leading teams of people from different backgrounds.
● Awareness of project management methodologies.
● The capability of adapting to new software systems and technologies.

Business Analyst job opportunities are not going to die down anytime soon in the future. The
statement can be backed by the statistical facts revealed by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
(BLS)*, where business analyst jobs are expected to grow 14% from 2018 to 2028. The pace is
pretty fast when compared to other job roles.

So, if you are considering a career in the management field and aspiring to become a Business
Analyst, read this blog to understand what kind of questions are asked in a business analyst
interview. These questions will help you develop a good understanding of the role of a business
analyst and provide you with an idea of what skills hiring managers to expect from a job
applicant.

If you enjoy reading a pdf instead of a blog and want business analyst interview questions and
answers pdf, you can download it for free from our website.

50 Business Analyst Interviews Questions and Answers

We will now begin with the detailed business analyst interviews questions and answers. For
your convenience, the questions and answers have been divided into five categories.

1. Junior Business Analyst Interview Questions/Entry-level Business Analyst Interview

Questions
2. Salesforce Business Analyst Interview Questions
3. SQL Interview Questions For Business Analyst
4. Technical Business Analyst Interview Questions
 5. Senior Business Analyst Interview Questions

Recommended Reading: Top 6 Big Data and Business Analytics Companies to Work For
in 2015

Junior Business Analyst Interview Questions/Entry-level Business

Analyst Interview Questions

In this section, you will find those interview questions for business analyst profiles that are
usually asked for beginners in this field. We have also included the answers for each question to
give you an idea about how to answer business analyst job interview questions.

Q1. List a few methods for eliciting requirements.

Document Analysis
Survey/questionnaires
Focus group
Prototyping
Requirements work-shops
Interface analysis
Interviews Observation
Brainstorming

Q2. Describe a few categories of stakeholders in a business organization.

● Executive-level professionals who own a project from a business perspective.
 ● Experts of specific subjects who use the new project or system.
● Managers who are at the end of the user spectrum of the project.
● IT strategist who takes care of the technical aspects of the projects in a business.

Q3.What is the RUP method?

RUP stands for Rational Unified Process. RUP is a procedure of software development that is
“iterative, architecture-centric, and use-case driven”. The RUP method involves listing
requirements as use cases, which helps keep track of value to the lone business stakeholders
for each piece of serviceability. The crucial principles of RUP include focussing on risks,
primarily paying attention to the quality of the project, and prioritizing focus on value.

Q4. What do you understand by UML?

UML is the abbreviation for Unified Modeling Language. Business Analysts use it to describe
the requirements and outline of software systems. UML allows them to conveniently layout
project workflows which help in visualizing the scope of the project. There are different types of
UML diagrams like use case diagrams, complete domain diagrams, sequence diagrams, etc.

Q5. What are the problems associated with choosing the waterfall model?
In the waterfall model, each project process is completed linearly, and at the end, the deliverable
is ready. This model is out of practice these days because pushing the choice of working
software towards the end of the project is not fruitful as software picked using the waterfall
methodology often fails to satisfy stakeholders’ needs and preferences. Another problem
associated with this model is that it makes it difficult for an organization to get accustomed to
changes as the requirements are pre-defined.

Q6. Briefly explain the Agile methodology.

Agile Methodology focuses on taking small steps to allow the users to decide upon a working
software as early as possible Agile methodologies’ center of attention is collaboration,
interaction, and responding to change over procedures, documentation, and following a master
plan.

Q7. List a few categories of tools that a business analyst must know according to you.
● Microsoft Office Suite which includes text editors, spreadsheets, presentations tools.
● Defect Tracking Tools
● Modelling Tools
● Wireframing Tools
● Requirement Management Tools
● Project Management Tools

Q8. Name two diagrams that a Business analyst can use to outline a project.
Collaboration diagrams
Case diagrams

Q9. What are the essential stages of a business development process?

The four key stages are forming, storming, norming, and performing.

Q10. What do you understand by exceptions?

These are the unwanted errors that are revealed after one runs an application.

Q11. What do you mean by Requirement Elicitation?

Requirements Elicitation is the process of investigating and identifying the requirements of a
system from users, customers, and other stakeholders. The process is also often referred to as
"requirement gathering".

Q12. List the differences between business requirements and needs.

A business requirement is a technically detailed description put forward by stakeholders for
solving a business problem or objective. On the other hand, a need is a concise statement that
summarises all the requirements.
For example:
Need Requirements

I need to buy a house for my family. The house should have:

3 Bedrooms
1 Hall
1 Kitchen
2 Washrooms
There should be a spacious balcony with a
small garden.
The floor should be wooden.

Q13. What are the four core responsibilities of a Business Analyst?

The four most important responsibilities of a Business Analyst include:
1. Elicit: A business analyst is expected to communicate with the business project
stakeholders and recognize their expectations from the project.
2. Analyze: Understanding the stakeholders’ expectations and designing a set of steps
that must be followed to change business processes, information systems, and business
policies.
3. Communicate: A business analyst connects various stakeholders and customers in a
business project. Communicating requirements and solving problems is a key
responsibility of a Business Analyst.
4. Validate: Understanding the requirements and presenting them in a structured manner
is done by a Business Analyst. The structured document is then used to understand the
practical feasibility of project implementation.

Recommended Reading: 50 Tableau Interview Questions and Answers for 2021

Technical Business Analyst Interview Questions
Here are a few common questions you will likely encounter in the second or third hiring
interview round for a business analyst role. These are technical questions that allow the hiring
manager to examine how deeply you understand the responsibilities of a Business Analyst.

Q1. What is a flowchart, and why does a Business Analyst need it?
A flowchart is a diagram that shows the workflow of a business system using signs and
symbols. They provide business analysts with a straightforward way of highlighting the key
processes involved in a business process. You can share your experience of using a flowchart if
you have done it before.

Q2. Explain SRS and its components.

SRS stands for Software Requirements Specification. It is a document that specifies which
software will be used and a justification for choosing it to fulfill the needs of stakeholders. It also
highlights how the software is expected to perform and what goals it will achieve.
The components of SRS include:
● Functional requirements of the business system
● Non-functional/Performance requirements of the system
● Goals of Executing a business process
● Design Constraints

Q3. What is BRD?

BRD stands for Business Requirements Document. It is a document that contains the objectives
and solution methodology of a business project. It highlights the customers’ needs and
expectations and the constraints that play a crucial role in implementing the business solution.

Q4. Differentiate between BRD and SRS.

BRD SRS

BRD stands for Business Requirements SRS stands for Software Requirements
Document. Specification.

A Business Analyst is responsible for creating A System Analyst or a Business Analyst

a BRD. handle SRS documents.

Primarily highlights the requirements of a Primarily highlights functional and

business and its stakeholders. non-functional requirements.

This document is used in the early stages of This document is used during the planning
project development. phase of the project development.

Q5. What do you mean by Black box testing?

Black-box testing is a way of testing software to evaluate the functionality of an application
without diving into its internal workings or structures.

Q6. What is BPMN?

BPMN stands for Business Process Model and Notation. It is a flowchart-based diagram that is
used to project the layout of implementing a business problem’s solution end-to-end.

Q7. What is the significance of GAP analysis?

GAP analysis is a method that companies utilize to keep track of their business growth. It is
used to draw comparisons between the current performance and the expected performance. It
reflects how well the company is utilizing the resources at hand and allows the stakeholders to
identify how to reach its full potential.

Q8. What do you mean by Scope creep?

Scope highlights the work that needs to be done in a project. In project management, scope
creep refers to an increase in the project requirements as the project work progresses. An
example would be the number of expected deliverables from the project increased from one to
five as the project life cycle progressed. Scope creep is usually caused when there is a conflict
of interest among different stakeholders.

Guess-Estimate Interview Questions for Business Analysts

Apart from the business analyst technical interview questions mentioned above, specific
technical questions target the guess estimate skills. Here are a few such business analyst
interview questions with answers.

Q9. How many cups of tea Mumbaikars drank last month?

For keeping the solution of this problem relatively simple, you can weigh each day of the week
equally; that is, the number of cups people consume per day is independent of which day of the
week it is.

Mumbai has a population of 1.25 crores. Let us take that number to be one crore to make the
calculations less complex. Roughly, you can assume that 20% of the population are children
and likely do not drink tea. Also, you can consider the following assumptions:
● 30% Consistent Tea Drinkers (People who have 3 cups of tea in a day)
● 20% Daily Tea Drinkers (People who have one cup of tea in a day)
● 20% Casual Tea Drinkers (People who have one cup of tea in a week)
● 10% Non-Drinkers (People who do not drink tea)

The calculations for the above-mentioned categories will be as follows:

0.3*3*7 (percentage, number cups in a week = 1*) =6.3 for consistent tea drinkers
0.2*1*7 = 1.4 for daily tea drinkers
0.2*1*1 =0.2 for casual tea drinkers
0 for non-drinkers

Total number of tea drinkers= (6.3 + 1.4+0.2)*1.25 = 7.9*1.25 = 9.875 crores

Q10. How many cars do you think are there in Delhi?

You can restrict the discussion for this question by considering only personal-use cars.

The population of Delhi is about 1.9 crores, and we can 2.0 crores for simplicity. Let us consider
that each family in Delhi has four members as Delhi is a metropolitan city. Now, not all families
are capable of owning a car in the city. So, we will assume the population is divided into three
categories based on their annual income (low, middle, and high-income class). In India, a large
number of families fall under the category of the middle class, so it is safe to consider the
following percentages:
30% Low-income class
50% Middle-Income class
20% High-Income class

Another assumption that seems plausible is that only 50% of middle-class families own a car.
For the high-income class, we will suppose each family owns two cars.

So, the calculations will be as follows:

0 for Low income class
0.5*0.5*1 = 0.25 for Middle Income class
0.2*1*2 = 0.4 for High Income class

Total = (0.4 + 0.25)*2/4 crore = 32.5 lakhs (Dividing by four to count the number of families)

Q11. Estimate the number of people using the iPhone in India.

To keep it straightforward, we will not consider the version of the iPhone separately and
suppose all the versions of iPhones together.

Since iPhones are somewhat expensive, we will assume that only professionals and people in
their 40s/50s own an iPhone. Thus, senior citizens (20%) and young adults and children(20%)
will not be considered.

iPhones are expensive enough that they do not attract a large portion of professionals. Most
young professionals have responsibilities and often find it challenging to afford an iPhone. So,
we will assume only 5% of the professionals and senior citizens are eligible for purchasing an
iPhone.

Now, not all professionals consider an iPhone as a worthwhile investment and often switch to
other options available in the market. We will therefore consider that only 50% of such people
own an iPhone.
The calculations will thus be:
60% * 0.05 * 0.5 * 125 crore ~ 2.4 crores iPhones are there in India

Q12. Give us a rough estimate of the number of ping-pong balls that one can fit inside a
Boeing 747.
There are various sizes of ping pong balls available in the market. You can assume anyone that
you want if the interviewee does not specify it.

For this problem, we will have to estimate the volume of a Boeing 747 aircraft. Let us start by
assuming it can accommodate 400 people. This means it will have 400 seats. Let us now
believe the aisle space can accommodate about two rows of 40 more seats. Additionally, we
take into account the remaining space by assuming the space available above the seats is the
same as that occupied by the seats. So, we have 960 seats now. Lastly, we count the space for
the galley and washroom by adding 20 more seats. To make it less complicated, let us round
the number of seats to 1K.

Now, for each seat, we will roughly calculate the space occupied by an average human in a
sitting position. Taking that to be 4ft x 2ft x 1 ft, we have 8 cubic feet of space.

So, the plane has 8K cubic feet ~1.4 x 107 cubic inches of space. If we consider the volume of a
ping-pong ball to be 5 cubic inches, then the number of balls that can be accommodated with
70% packing efficiency is ~ (0.7*1.4 x 107)/5 = 1960000.

SQL Interview Questions For Business Analyst

Apart from testing your knowledge about the jargon that is required for a business analyst role,
the hiring manager will also ask you SQL business analyst interview questions. SQL is database
management software that business analysts widely use to analyze the company’s growth and
business performance. In this section, you will learn how to answer common business analyst
SQL interview questions.

Q1. Differentiate between unique key, foreign key, and primary key.

Unique Key Foreign Key Primary Key

A unique key is a set of A foreign key is a set of A primary key is a set of

values present in one or more values contained in a column values contained in a column
columns of a table that of a table that point to the of a table that can be used to
uniquely identify each primary key of another table. label each record in that table
record/row in that table. A foreign key is a connection uniquely. There can be only
between the two tables. one primary key in a table
and should not contain NULL
values.
Q2. Explain different types of joins.
Here are the different types of joins available in SQL that one can use while extracting data from
a table.
● Full Join is used to extract all the rows that are present in the two tables.
● Left Join is used to extract the common rows between two tables and all table rows that
are mentioned on the left-hand side of a query.
● Right Join is used to extract the common rows between two tables and all table rows
that are mentioned on the right-hand side of a query.
● Inner Join is used to retrieve rows from tables that match with each other.

Q3. How are the TRUNCATE and DELETE commands different?

TRUNCATE DELETE

The TRUNCATE command is used to discard DELETE command is used to remove a

all the rows from a table. particular set of rows from a table using the
WHERE clause.

One can not use ROLLBACK after using One can use COMMIT and ROLLBACK after
TRUNCATE in a query to nullify the effect of using DELETE in a query.
the TRUNCATE command.

Q4. Can one create user-defined functions? If yes, justify with the help of an example.
Yes, one can create user-defined functions in SQL to avoid writing queries with the same logic
repeatedly.

Q5. What does an ALIAS command do?

ALIAS command is used to define a new name for an existing table. For example, consider a
table with the name Student, and one wants to use the name stu for it.
‘Select stu.StuID, Ex.Result from student stu, Exam as Ex where stu.stuID = Ex. StuID

Q6. Write an SQL query for creating an empty table from an existing table.
Here is an example.
Select * into xyz from student where 2=3

Q7. How will you perform pattern matching in SQL?

Pattern matching in SQL can be performed using the LIKE operator. One can use ‘%’ to identify
pattern zero or more characters and ‘_’ for identifying patterns that match precisely one
character.

Q8. What is a database cursor?

A database cursor is a pointer that points to a particular row in a table. It is capable of traversing
all the records in a table and is thus used for adding, retrieving, and removing rows from a table.
Q9. List and explain the different types of indexes.
The three types of indexes are:
Clustered Index: A clustered index is an index that reorders the values in a table based on the
values present in a particular column of a table. One table can only have one clustered index.
Non clustered Index: Non clustered indexes are the indexes where the order of row values in a
table column does not align with the implicit order of values in the table.
Unique Index: A unique index is a column in a database used to uniquely identify each row in a
table. It makes sure that no two rows have the same key values.

Q10. Please point out the difference between SQL and MySQL.

SQL MySQL

SQL stands for Structured Query Language. MySQL is a relational database management
It is a query language that is used to fetch software that is open source and relies on
data from a database. SQL for querying a database.

SQL is a language for querying data, so it MySQL is software for managing database
doesn’t get frequent updates, and the systems and is updated frequently.
commands remain valid.

Q11. Explain how to write SQL code to extract column mappings and store them into a
final table?

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Microsoft Excel Interview Questions For Business Analyst

Microsoft Excel is a popular tool among business analysts for analyzing databases and drawing
insightful conclusions that assist in decision making. This section will teach you how to excel at
answering business analyst interview questions that will test a candidate’s analytical skills in MS
Excel.

Q1. What is the order of mathematical operations that are followed in MS Excel?
MS Excel follows the order denoted by the PEMDAS acronym for performing mathematical
operations. PEMDAS is an abbreviation for Parentheses, Exponents, Multiplication, Division,
Addition, Subtraction.

Q2. What are macros in MS Excel?

A Macro in MS Excel is a set of operations or a single operation that one can execute as many
times as one wants. One can save macros and name them as per their choice. Macros are
extremely useful as they save their users time in performing repetitive tasks.

Q3. How are SUBSTITUTE and REPLACE functions used differently?

 SUBSTITUTE REPLACE

Substitute function is used in excel to replace Replace function is used to edit a specific set
a given set of characters (one or more) in a of characters in a string with a string of the
string with a user-defined string of characters. user’s choice by specifying the position of the
characters to be replaced.

Q4. Is it possible to use pivot tables for filtering data?

Yes, one can use pivot tables for filtering data in MS Excel as per their requirements. All they
have to do is keep the field that you want to use for filtering data. After that, go to the ‘Analyze’
button in the menu bar and choose ‘Insert Slicer’ option. Next, select the field you want to
generate slices for, and press OK. Now, you will see the option of choosing items that you want
to display in the pivot table. That’s all. Here is a sample video by Microsoft that will help you
understand how to filter data using pivot tables.

Q5. Describe the steps of creating a dropdown list in MS Excel.

● Select the cells where you want to have a drop-down list.
● Switch to the Ribbon Data tab.
● Select Data Validation from the Data Tools Community.
● Then head over to Setup>Allow>List to navigate
● Choose the array of the source list and click OK.

Senior Business Analyst Interview Questions

This section contains those interview questions and answers for business analyst jobs that are
usually asked for someone who has been a business analyst before and understands the role
thoroughly. The questions for such candidates are usually aimed at understanding the
behavioral aspects of the candidates and their ability to handle difficult situations. These
questions do not have a fixed answer and are based on a candidate’s experience. Therefore,
this section will give you a general overview of how to respond to such questions and excel in
an interview.

Q1. How do you plan to deal with a difficult stakeholder?

This question aims to test your ability to handle a conflicting situation and come up with relevant
suggestions. You can display your problem-solving approach here by explaining s situation
where you took such a situation in the past.

Q2. Which business analyst tools do you prefer to use for enhancing your efficiency?
Through this question, the hiring manager would want to know how aware you are of the widely
used tools in the industry. They usually expect you to have had hands-on experience with
popular Business Analysis tools. If you aren’t that aware of such tools, it would be good to first
work on a few projects that will help you polish your skills in this domain.
Q3. How would you respond to a situation where a delay in work completion affected
business processes?
This is one of the most common business analyst behavioral interview questions asked in a
senior business analyst interview. The idea is to understand how well a candidate can handle
delays and devise a business growth plan. It would be nice if you could highlight your
experience in managing such a situation previously. Additionally, you can highlight your time
management skills to suggest how you usually avoid delays.

Q4. So far in your career as a business analyst, what is the most challenging problem
you solved?
This question is the perfect opportunity for you to showcase your talent and skills in overcoming
challenging situations. You are expected to explain how your personality and skills truly
complement a senior business analyst’s role and how you have utilized them to figure out your
way of solving complex problems.

Q5. How do you go about convincing a company about adopting new business
methodologies?
Here you must reflect on your communication skills and your capability of communicating a
business idea and its implementation. Talk about how you are interested in testing newer
methodologies and analyzing how they benefit a business.

Amazon Business Analyst Interview Questions

Q1. Share an instance where you worked with an extensive dataset.

Q2. Describe when you performed predictive analytics over a dataset, and the conclusions
escalated a business’ growth.

Q3. Share your experience of handling a complex interaction with a senior stakeholder.

Q4. Why do you want to work at Amazon?

Salesforce Business Analyst Interview Questions

Q1. How is Salesforce able to track sales?

Q2. Share your views on enterprise resource planning (ERP) system upgrades.

Q3. What do you know about standard and custom object records in Salesforce?

Q4. What do you think would be the best practice tips and advice to keep clean data in
Salesforce?
Q5. As a business analyst, what criteria do you follow for describing a good quality
requirement?

Data Analytics Projects Ideas for Business Analyst

You have gone through some of the top business analyst interview questions in this blog. Apart
from knowing these questions, a business analyst is expected to work on a variety of
technologies. These usually include artificial intelligence-based skills as well. IIf you are
interested in developing your expertise in that domain and want to work on business analytics
projects that help you develop skills on big data and analytics from scratch, check out the
projects from the ProjectPro repository. We have end-to-end solutions for industry-relevant
projects on Data Science and Big Data that you can customize as per your needs to solve a
business problem.

Here are a few projects that you might want to start with if you are a beginner.

Data Science Projects

Predicting survival on the Titanic

MNIST Dataset: Digit Recognition System

Credit Card Fraud Detection

Big Data Projects

The Complete Guide to Start Mining Bitcoin in AWS cloud

Hadoop Project -Design a Hadoop Architecture

Hive Project-Data Warehouse Design for E-commerce Environments