My Top Interview Advice as a Millionaire from Working as an Accountant

I have reached a millionaire status working normal finance jobs, and I say this not to brag, but just to give you an idea with the success that I've had. And when I say normal finance positions, I'm talking about climbing the corporate ladder from an accountant position to accounting manager, assistant controller, all the way up to controller. And this means that I kept a great work-life balance, as opposed to jobs in high finance like investment banking and equity research that pay A lot more and you can reach millionaire status a lot faster, but that comes with a lot of stress and very low work-life balance. And that usually leads to lower health, both mentally and physically. In this video, I wanna talk about a recent experience I had applying for a job and going through a job interview for a director of finance position for a fintech company in New York City, and how I went about preparing myself for the interview and how I navigated answering the question with both the recruiter and the hiring manager, because there's a different strategy with these 2 personas. Scripting your answer word for word for a job interview in finance might be hurting your chances of getting the job. All right, so the example we're talking about is for a director of finance position paying somewhere between $250K to $300K base salary in New York City, which is the average based on Robert Half's salary guide. But this advice is a philosophy overall and applies to any level of finance jobs because we're talking about 2 basic concepts: a packaged answer versus a conversational answer. A packaged answer is one that you rehearse beforehand, you script word for word, and you just spew it out during the interview, which is one way to do things. But the other approach is conversational, is talking to me one-on-one and gain my trust as a hiring manager, which is what I want to talk about today— when to use a packaged answer and when to use a conversational answer. All right, so the process begins by you applying for the position and submitting your resume. And typically you'd want to customize your resume for the job description, and it's something that you could do yourself, uh, writing the word for word, or you can use an AI tool like ChatGPT or Claude, uh, where you can upload your resume and the job description and try to customize your resume to match the job description. What, what that does is, is that it matches the bullet points in a job description by highlighting from your experience upfront the things that matches that job description. So this way it makes it easier for the screener or whatever system is reading your resume to grab on the keywords of the things that you've done in your past that match what they're looking for. So you can use ChatGPT or Claude, or you can use the Controller Lab, which is a tool that I built that matches your resume To the job description. Okay, so that is the first step, applying. Then your resume gets over to the company. If it matches, they will take a look at it. If it doesn't match, they will set it aside and forget it. Now, if it matches, they'll set up a call with you, with the screening person, which is typically a recruiter that works for the company, or sometimes it's an outside recruiter as well. Now, here's when it comes into play, the scripting before the call. So the way that I want you to prepare for these calls is to follow a certain model that says situation, Problem, solution, result, and lesson. What is the situation? Is that management needed reports to get to them sooner so that they can make decisions faster. What is the problem? Is that we were taking about 20 days to close the books for a given particular month. That is the problem. The solution is to look at the dependencies and the things within the month-end close process that you can fix and solve for these dependencies as an accountant or a controller So that you can get the month-end closed faster. The result is that we were able to close the books instead of 20 days, we were closing the books in 8 days. And the lesson is that we figured out where the bottlenecks were. Closing AP was crucial to coming up with the month-end accruals, etc., etc. You know, you get the picture here is that you're showing what the situation was, the problem, solution, result, and lesson. So following this model is really helpful in preparing for the job interview because you most certainly will get a question that asks you about, tell us about a process that you improved, or tell us about a problem that you solved. So rehearsing for these things beforehand is, is a great idea that I encourage, but scripting is what I discourage. But if you're a person who's going to script, if scripting is something that helps you and you love to just know word for word what you're going to say, I would say do that with the recruiter, not with the hiring manager. The recruiter is someone who's looking for a packaged answer. If you give them a packaged answer to, for example, tell me about yourself, and I would go and say, well, I'm a CPA with 20 years working in finance. I started out working at PwC as an auditor, and then I transitioned out to work in the private sector, and I took a role as an accountant, accounting manager, and climbed my way up to controller, which I've been working as for the last 10 years or so. And fintech companies. So you see, this is highly scripted. I look like I memorized this answer, which is fine if you want to give it packaged like that to the screening call to the recruiter. That would work fine. With the hiring manager though, I would follow a different strategy. With the hiring manager, this is somebody who is potentially going to be your boss. So this is somebody who will look at you and ask themselves whether they want to be working with you day in and day out. Can they trust you? Do you have credibility? Is the way that you speak sound natural and that you're having a conversation, or are you just Just maybe a robot who just memorized a bunch of things and will just come out to the interview and spew it out without even thinking. So the way that I would answer a question on, tell me about your career, tell me about yourself, to a hiring manager would sound more like, well, I'm a CPA. I started out my career at PwC. I worked in banking and capital markets. I worked there for a couple of years. The work-life balance there got a little hectic and I was starting out, starting a new family. So I transitioned out to private industry where I worked at a first company as an accountant. I worked there for 2 years and then I progressed into an accounting manager position. And then I left the company when I found a better opportunity working as an assistant controller at the next company. I stayed there for 3 years helping the CFO build out the finance function. We built processes, we migrated off of QuickBooks into NetSuite, and then the company was relocating from New York City to North Carolina. And that's when I had to leave the company because I couldn't make that move work for myself and my family. So I transitioned to a role at Company X. So if you notice the difference here, I'm trying to sound professional, but yet friendly and conversational. I'm trying to sound like I came up with these things right at the moment because I know my history, right? Versus sounding scripted as if I'm rehearsing for a movie. If you're preparing for a job interview right now in finance and you lack experience in a particular area of finance, go and check out the Controller Lab. Where you can practice hands-on and get hands-on experience in specific areas, including ERP, where if you haven't used ERP in the past, you get the chance to practice hands-on and gain skills that are required in the job market. Make sure to subscribe to my channel if you haven't done so already, and tap that like button very gently if you liked the video, and I'll see you guys in the next one.